The Living Alchemist
by Traitor of All Traitors
Summary: In their attempt to bring back their mother, two brothers unexpectedly meet a young man that may change more than a few lives, including theirs. Meet Shinji Ikari, who obtains the gift of alchemy with his new predicament. Set in the 2003 anime, not the original manga and 2009 anime.
1. Prologue

Creation began on 02-02-18

Creation ended on 02-06-18

Neon Genesis Evangelion

The Living Alchemist

A/N: Inspired by what might've been just an error made in an earlier published information guide made years ago.

All he recalled before he lost consciousness was that he was cold. He never recalled any illuminated visions or obscured echoes from the past that he had no recollection of. Then, the next thing he did know, he was shown things beyond his sense of comprehension. Strands, waves, atoms, patches of hair and skin, places where life lingered and death ravaged, even signs of war and famine leaving their marks. It was as though a vast amount of information was being transferred from the universe into his mind against his will, overwhelming him.

 _What is this?_ He wondered, coming to, seeing a dark ceiling…and smelling the scent of blood and decay around him. _Where am I?_

"Are you alright?" He heard someone say, and saw someone else in a large suit of armor looking down at him. "Hello? Can you understand me?"

He slowly moved his head as he struggled to get up…and saw a boy, younger than he was, with golden-blond hair, laying the floor with a bloody stump where his left leg used to be…along with a gash of blood where his right arm used to be.

"Gah!" He gasped, getting up to his feet and comprehending where he was right now. "Where… How… Who…"

"Please," the guy in the armor spoke again. "I don't know if you can understand me, but please… Please, help him."

He pointed to the injured boy.

-x-

"…Who is he?" Winry Rockbell asked Alphonse Elric about the mysterious boy in the strange outfit as he sat away from them in the hallway.

"We don't know," the armor explained. "He just…showed up before I realized anything."

"How did you end up like this?"

"We were…just trying to bring her back."

The door opened and a small woman with graying hair walked out.

"Is Ed going to be alright?" Alphonse asked her.

"It's too soon to say for sure," she responded. "What were you two thinking, trying to bring your mother back to life? Nobody's ever succeeded in completing Human Transmutation and lived to tell about it. Something like this was bound to happen…and what's his story (she pointed to the unknown boy)?"

"We don't know who he is. He just…showed up in the aftermath. He doesn't seem to know what's going on, either."

"What is he wearing?" Winry wondered. "It looks like pajamas or unusual armor."

"Has anyone spoken to him?" The woman asked them.

"We're not sure if he even understands us," said Alphonse to her. "He seemed to understand that Ed was hurt, but after he got here, he just sat over there and hasn't said anything."

"Maybe he doesn't talk," suggested Winry.

"Or maybe he doesn't want to talk," suggested Alphonse.

"No," the woman stated in realization. "He's just confused. He was probably somewhere else before he ended up in your house and has no understanding of how he got there or why. So, he's disoriented by his current surroundings."

-x-

The ruins of the results of bombing the Twelfth Angel had the expected outcome, as suspected by Misato Katsuragi. The buildings within view were covered in the blood-like substance of the Angel's body, the shadow was gone, and Evangelion Unit-01 was destroyed beyond any reasonable doubt of repair. But that wasn't the worst part of the aftermath. No, the worst part that was the icebreaker was the ruins of the Entry Plug…and the mutilated remains of the Third Child, Shinji Ikari.

 _He screamed for help,_ thought Misato, looking down at his dismembered left arm on the ground, _and we killed him…just to get rid of an Angel. We didn't even try to find an alternate solution that actually worked._

She was going to beat Ritsuko Akagi senseless when she got her hands on her.

Standing a few feet away, the Second Child, Asuka Langley Soryu, saw the remains of Shinji's legs laying a good distance from his right arm. She didn't really think he'd die from multiple explosions and a disabled AT-Field. Maybe a bump on the head and a concussion, but not this. There was literally nothing left of the boy.

 _Shiest,_ she thought.

-x-

It bothered him to see that who he had initially thought was a guy in a suit of armor was really nothing but an animated suit of armor when he asked for him to remove his helmet and face guard. He didn't have any prejudice or bias against any of them, but a suit of armor moving on its own and being possessed by a little boy after losing his whole body to an attempt to bring the dead back to life did leave him feeling that he had stumbled into a world unlike anything he did know.

 _Where am I?_ He wondered again, stopping in front of a calendar on the wall and seeing a large map and the date. "What the… Uh, excuse me?"

The woman known as Pinako, after redressing Edward's stump of a left leg, came over and responded, "Yes?"

"This calendar here, is the date accurate?" He asked her.

"Yes, it is," she answered him.

"Nineteen-Ten?"

"Is something wrong?"

 _How'd I go from being in Twenty-Fifteen to being elsewhere in Nineteen-Ten?_

He banged his head against the wall and just wanted to believe that he was dreaming a crazy dream as a result of being sucked into the Twelfth Angel. Except nothing made sense right now. If he was dreaming, then even self-injury would cause him to wake up…and he was still here.

"Where exactly is here?" He asked her.

"You're in Resembool of the country of Amestris."

Resembool and Amestris, neither of which sounded Japanese at all to him…or relating to any geographic location he was familiar with knowing. Try as he might to think positive, there was nothing here that he could tie to. The world he knew was gone, along with the people he knew. His guardian was gone, his accursed obligation was gone, the father he detested was gone, even the depraved cause he tried to believe in was no more. He was somewhere else, with no ties or roots to bind him. He was…totally alone…and free.

-x-

"…Is there any chance of Unit-01 being repaired from this…incident?" Gendo Ikari asked Ritsuko the next day in his office, wanting to know the status of the purple Eva.

"Not at this time, sir," she answered, trying to ignore the shiner Misato gave her right eye for indirectly causing the death of the Third Child. "It has suffered extensive damage to eighty-two percent of its body and components. It'll be at least two months to fully repair the damage."

"And…what of the pilot?"

"The Third Child didn't survive. Fourth-degree burns and the obliteration of his body. We gathered what was left of him and sent the remains to the lab."

"Dismissed."

She left and was glad for to do so, leaving Gendo alone.

" _The Evas pale in comparison to the Human Instrumentality Project, Ikari,"_ he remembered SEELE 01 telling him during a previous meeting. _"They may have similar regenerative abilities as the Angels, but even they have their limits if put under pressure with no time to adjust."_

Unfortunately, he thought nothing of it so long as the Evas survived to continue doing their task, regardless of what became of the pilots. And as for the pilots, it was unlikely that they would be harmed to such an extent so long as the cores were intact, but this was unexpected. The usage of every remaining N² explosive against this Angel while negating its AT-Field had the unexpected backlash of negating Unit-01's AT-Field, leaving it vulnerable to the extreme heat and pressure of repeated explosions that even its armor couldn't protect it against.

" _There's no one else that can pilot the Evas,"_ he remembered telling Ritsuko after the Third Angel incident. _"As long as they survive, that is what I'll have them do."_

" _With no regard to what they may want?"_ She had asked him, and he never answered back.

He didn't want to admit it at all, even to himself, but he should've just sent the boy away again. There wouldn't have been any reason to think about him beyond his former service to the Eva program…instead of having to deal with the possibility of putting the kid into the ground at a later time if he didn't survive.

-x-

Shinji returned to the Elric house. He wasn't sure why, but maybe if he did, he'd find some closure to what was going on right now. It seemed like a nice and happy home, full of something he barely knew of, even looking at several photographs of the family.

 _If they were so happy, why were they so sad?_ He wondered to himself as he set down the old photograph of when the family had their father involved in their lives, probably back when the brothers were still too young to recall many things.

"…Aaah…" He heard something down in the basement.

"Hello?" He called out.

"…Huurgh…" The noise came again, sounding like someone in pain.

Stepping onto the top steps leading down into the dark basement, Shinji had a bad feeling about what was down there. It was like something was reaching down his spine with an ice pick.

 _'My genesis_ _…_ _This is where it all begins_ _…_ _'_

Slowly, he crept down the steps, wishing there was a light switch he could use to illuminate the shadows of this cellar-like chamber. Once he set his left foot on the floor, he felt something that didn't feel like a smooth surface. Looking down, he saw red smears around his feet…and his eyes widened in fright; he recognized blood when he saw it.

 _'The sky breaks_ _…_ _Light reaches for me_ _… I'm awake for the first time… It's too late… I'm on the other side…'_

Shinji approached the spot on the floor that was marked with a large circle that, for some reason, caused the hairs on the back of his neck to stand on end.

 _But…why does this worry me?_ He wondered. _I've never seen it before._

"…Guuurgh!" The voice came…and Shinji felt something large and misshapen attack him from behind, sending him to the ground.

FLASH! He saw the Elric brothers perform their attempt to resurrect their mother and the horrifying repercussions that befell them.

 _'My genesis… This is where it all begins…'_

He was in front of a large, double-sided door with those symbols he'd seen all the time in his father's office (not that he really cared about that), floating within a large, white expanse.

"Where am I?" He asked, but saw that he was alone.

Creak! The doors opened and he saw a large eyeball looking at him.

 _'This is where it all begins…'_

The thing that attacked Shinji was as large as a person, but so misshapen that he couldn't call it a person. And the worst thing of it was that Shinji couldn't even find a face with which to attempt communication with the creature.

 _A homunculus, a failed attempt at Human Transmutation,_ he realized; he wasn't even sure how he knew of this, but was more concerned with just living to see the next day. _If left alone in this agonizing state, you wouldn't be a danger to anyone, but you still cling to existence like a parasite in search of food._

Shinji kept the homunculus at bay with his arms, but its weight was still its great edge…and he could only keep it away from his body for so long. He removed his right arm from the homunculus and placed it on the floor…and then stabbed it with a kunai that formed from the material of the floor!

"Guh!" The homunculus gasped, and was then stabbed seven more times by Shinji with the kunai. "Gaah!"

A silence between the two of them lasted for a minute before the homunculus became limp and fell to the right of Shinji, right onto the Transmutation Circle.

"I'm sorry for what was done to you, but this is a better fate for you and the two that made you by mistake," Shinji told it, placing his hands on the floor in front of the circle, triggering its circulation of energy. _To obtain, something of equal value must be lost, but in order to reclaim what was lost, one must give up what they obtained. If I send you back to whence you came, I undo what was done to the brothers._

As it struggled to get back up, the homunculus was suddenly breaking down.

"Huurgh!" It shrieked, its misshapen arms atomizing as its skin and exposed bones followed suit with them. "Aaaaurgh!"

Then, just as it completely atomized out of existence, Shinji lost consciousness and fell to the floor, hoping that by doing this, he had undone the fate that before Edward and Alphonse Elric.

-x-

Edward awoke to the next day, feeling like the events of what transpired the previous night were nothing more than a crazy dream. Strangely, though, he didn't feel any pain in his left leg or right arm.

"Hey, you're finally awake," he heard Winry say to him, and he turned his head to the right of the room where she sat beside him. "How do you feel?"

He raised his right arm to wipe the sweat off his forehead…and gasped at the sight of it!

"My arm!" He went.

"Yeah, about that," she uttered. "The boy that appeared at your house, Shinji, went back there for three hours, and then came back with Al's body when…he collapsed. Then, he just did something with his hands and some water and your hand was put back on your body."

"He…performed a transmutation and restored my arm…and returned with Al's body?"

"Yeah. He seems… He seems like he has a lot on his mind right now, and everything else is keeping him from properly adjusting to his current situation. At first, we thought he was going to try and leave the town, but then he came back. It might be that he has nowhere to really go."

Ed flexed his right hand for a bit. It felt like his arm had been restored, down to the very sensation, and then removed the blanket from his lower body, seeing, to his great surprise, his left leg had also been restored to him.

"Where is he now?" He asked her.

"Outside on the porch," she answered him.

-x-

The sunlight felt good on Shinji's face. It made him feel like a new person. And then, he looked down at the kunai in his left hand, pondering what to do.

"Hey, there," he heard someone say behind him.

He flinched and held the blade defensively in front of him as he turned to face them, seeing that it was only Edward.

"Oh," he responded, calming down and setting the blade on the porch stand. "How are you?"

"Good," he answered him. "About my arm and leg, and my brother's body… Thank you."

"You're welcome. Just don't do what you two did again, please. I've only been here for less than a day, but I know that Human Transmutation is something that only those, either desperate or curious, commit to keep from facing a difficult passage in their lives, and it's nearly impossible to achieve completely because you're reaching for the impossible that even the gods themselves won't do, no matter how much it's desired. And…even if it were possible, the price is still too high to pay for anyone."

"How'd you do it, though? How'd you get Al's body back?"

Shinji looked at the porch floor and stated, "You speak of this…Equivalent Exchange in the foundation of Alchemy, as though it were an absolute truth…so in order to obtain, something of equal value must be given up. The same applies to the reversal if applied properly."

"To reclaim what was lost, one must give up what they obtained," Ed realized. "You returned our failed attempt back to where it came from. When that happened…"

"It's basically undoing the price that was paid for unintentionally by you two. I'm sorry to say, though, it didn't undo what you did to keep your brother; the sacrifice of your arm was a different price you paid. But I somehow knew what could be done to remedy that lost. I just…did a transmutation and generated for you a new arm, exactly as the one you lost."

Ed held his right arm and thought that the regeneration of lost limbs was impossible, as no other alchemist had ever performed such an attempt. It didn't seem like it related to Human Transmutation, as he was still alive and never died.

"Still, it's impressive that you were able to survive such an extreme," said Shinji to him. "And you're, what, ten? Eleven?"

"Eleven. So…what will you do now?"

"That's the thing. I'm not sure what I should do. The life I had… Well, the life I once knew…doesn't exist for me, anymore. After last night…I sort of had an epiphany about why I ended up at your house."

"Yeah, about that… I just assumed that it was an unintentional result of the transmutation."

"No, your transmutation had nothing to do with my displacement here. I was killed where I was…at the same time you attempted the forbidden art. My soul just wandered between two worlds and ended up here. Maybe this body I have was made from your attempt to bring your mother back with the leftover materials used to create your homunculus, maybe my body just ended up getting transported here. Who knows for sure? There's no point in wracking my brain on trying to ascertain the 'how' or 'why' to my situation. All that matters now is…what I do with the time I have here."

"Still, it would've been nice if I saw her again. Just to see her smile once more."

"Yeah, it would've been."

-x-

What was the point of having a funeral when the father wouldn't have his son's remains buried underground like the traditional cultures required by law deemed? What was the point of a memorial service for the boy when there were no cremains to light an incense for? None of this made any sense to Asuka as she stood in front of the grave marker used for Shinji, three days after the small service he was given.

She was angry that only a handful of people came to attend, none of whom included his father. Only the two stooges, Hikari, the First Child, Misato, Kaji, the penguin, the three Bridge Bunnies and the sub-commander bothered to show up and say their peace about Shinji. Of course, she couldn't fault any of them just because they were the only ones that did; she just wished that more people would have shown up, that his father would've said something meaningful about him…that she herself had pulled him out of the shadow before it was too late.

"It should've been different," she said to the tombstone. "It should've been different."

-x-

"…He must've cleaned up the place," said Alphonse to Edward as they returned to their father's study, seeing no signs of their failed Human Transmutation.

"That explains why that State Alchemist that showed up yesterday didn't seem to find any indication of any taboos being committed here," Ed stated, picking up one of the books on the table. "He probably did it to make absolutely sure that we didn't get in trouble with the State Military in case they started looking around."

"This is probably where he transmuted that knife he had with him," Al suspected, looking down at the floor and seeing signs of transmutation. "Anything could've been transmuted here, though, so there's no way to be sure."

"Or he's a neat freak to a degree. He even cleaned the shelves."

Outside by the river, Shinji, pondering his situation that he only confided in with the Elrics and the Rockbells, swung his kunai around with no particular reason to do so. Not a fighter by any stretch of the word, but he figured it was better to be armed than defenseless against others if he was going to venture out into this world that he was part of. And…he didn't like the way that man, this Roy Mustang, looked at him, like he was being suspected of foul play or aiding and abetting suspected criminal activity. He was careful to leave no trace of the Elrics' failed attempt, and he covered his plugsuit with regular shorts and a shirt, but the way the guy looked at him, it reminded him too much of his father looking down on him.

"You seem very attached to that thing," he heard a woman say behind him, and turned to see Winry watching him.

"It's the first thing I ever transmuted," he explained to her. "I'll keep it for as long as possible. There's a lot about this place that I don't know. I should probably get out and explore it."

"You would likely find out whatever information you desire from the National Central Library in the capital city of Amestris."

"So Edward says, but to access the whole of information they don't release to the public, I would have to be someone else entirely. I would have to be something else entirely."

"Yeah, a State Alchemist. Is that really the path you want to take?"

Her question was out of concern, since there seemed to be nothing but bad history between the Rockbells and the State Military, but Shinji had his own reasons for needing more information.

"I honestly don't care much for any military organizations that are supposed to be tasked with protecting the people any more than any of you do," he confessed, "but what other alternatives do I have? Anyhow, I'm more of a pacifist. I doubt that I could anything that would go against my conscience and what I swore I wouldn't do again if I could live elsewhere without the bindings of my past."

"And what was that you swore you wouldn't do?"

"That I would never fight in any conflict I didn't believe in or knew anything about from every perspective. I was, more or less, duped into such a conflict by my father, and he seemed to know more than he let on…but never said more than what he chose to disclose. It doesn't matter, anymore, though. I'm a whole world…and over a whole century away from the life I used to lead. For the first time in my life, I have nobody to tell me what to do, leaving me in charge of making my own decisions."

"No parents, no home… Nothing."

"Nothing in life is ever easy. We simply try to make the best of it."

-x-

It was a crazy request from Pinako Rockbell, but only because she saw what he was capable of and knew of what he did to restore the Elrics. As he traveled down the path towards the nearest train station that would take him to Central City for the Alchemy Exam, Shinji had been asked by the elder woman to keep watch over the Elrics, since he was, technically, older than Ed and Al were by three and four years, respectively.

"Can I ask what you intend to specialize in if you manage to become a State Alchemist, Shinji?" Al asked him.

"If given the chance, alchemically-induced regeneration," he expressed.

"Medical Alchemy," Ed clarified.

"I don't want to fight against others, anymore. I want to do something that is the opposite of harm to others."

"But…Medical Alchemy has been considered a dead-end by most of the alchemic community."

But Shinji was hopeful in finding out what could be possible in that field. He had been gifted with knowledge without wanting it, knew how to perform Alchemy without ever seeing it be demonstrated to him, and he had the freedom to see it through to the end for as long as he was here in this world.

"What do you two intend to specialize in?" He asked them.

"Construction Alchemy," Al answered.

"Defense Alchemy," Ed stated.

"Well, then, best of luck to all three of us."

-x-

"…I heard Rei didn't show up for synchronization testing for the third time this week," said Hyuga to Maya in the NERV cafeteria, a month after the funeral for Shinji.

"No, and neither did Asuka for the second time," the young woman explained. "Section Two has them under surveillance, but neither chooses to answer their phones."

"What'd you expect?" Shigeru asked them as he walked past them with his empty food tray. "Someone they worked with was killed, and it was a serious blow to them. They believed the Evas were the safest place to be…and they were shown that no place is safe from multiple detonations of the highest sort. Over nine-hundred bombs and no AT-Field, the Eva's just a big target waiting to be dismembered."

"Some people are considering transferring out of Tokyo-3 after the last attack. If the Evas aren't a sound strategy against the Angels, then why build them?" Hyuga stated.

-x-

"…You authorized the operation to force-salvage the Eva, Ikari," went Fuyutsuki to Gendo in his office. "You ordered Dr. Akagi to retrieve the Eva by any means necessary."

"There was no time to consider every option, Fuyutsuki," he told him.

"There's always time to consider alternatives, Ikari. What point is there to not consider other options if we're going to do the one that ends up being the one that shouldn't have been committed? There's a lot of regret. A lot of anger."

"To defeat the Angels, I will do whatever I have to in order to ensure a future for humanity."

"Lately, I've had to reevaluate my belief in NERV's goals…and a young man getting killed instead of rescued by the paramilitary agency he got drafted into serving by his father is one of the many things I don't need to remind me that I'm guilty of the same depravity that most of NERV is responsible for."

"What exactly are you saying?"

"I quit."

-x-

"You hate trains?" Al asked Shinji as they were riding the train towards Central City.

"Oh, on the contrary," he responded to the younger boy, "I like the quietness of trains. You don't normally get this measure of quiet on a train. It's simple and relieves stress over time."

"You sound like you never had enough of any peace," suggested Ed to him.

"Yeah, too much quiet, never enough peace," he accepted. "Even in the darkest days of suffering, anyone can find slumber that allows for momentary peace, but for those that choose to inflict suffering onto others, their souls cannot know eternal rest. Ever."

"What?" The Elrics questioned, and Shinji had a look of momentary disorientation that quickly disappeared from him.

"Huh?" He reacted. "What'd I just say? Did I say something after not having enough peace?"

The brothers looked at one another before looking back at him and responded, "No, nothing."

Shinji turned to look out the window and felt some degree of detachment from his surroundings right now. He wondered if he had truly died where he used to reside? Had anyone managed to deal with the Angel? Did anyone think about him…or even miss him if he did die?

To be continued…

A/N: Here is the pilot chapter of another possibility to include in my multiverse storylines of _Evangelion_. It takes its inspiration from the original _FMA_ anime, so be prepared for any eventualities where you encounter familiar faces of the past.


	2. Making the Grade

Creation began on 02-06-18

Creation ended on 02-23-18

Neon Genesis Evangelion

The Living Alchemist: Making the Grade

Central City was very bland for a country's capital location and the head of state, as Shinji set his feet outside the train station with the Elric Brothers.

"So, this is Central, huh?" He expressed. "Seems a bit different from what I had originally expected."

"Well, what did you expect?" Ed asks him.

"The people to be a bit more lively."

"Yeah, it is kind of dull out here," Al agreed with him.

Then Shinji noticed a few cars pass them by that had pipes sticking out the back of them.

"Those were…steam-powered," he uttered.

"Technological revolution at its newest," Ed stated. "Welcome to Amestris."

"Yeah… Quite revolutionary."

A woman walked past them…and Shinji got a good look at her: She was tall like Misato, not too bad-looking, but long, ebony hair, reddish eyes like Rei, and a dress that seemed to highlight her bosom a bit too much for his likes, something he attributed to that day he met Asuka on the _Over the Rainbow_. But there was something else about that drew his eyes toward her. He wasn't sure what it was, but he just felt a little…put off by her.

"Shinji?" Alphonse asked. "Shinji?"

"Huh?" He responded, sounding like he was lost in thought. "Yes?"

"You zoned out for two minutes," he explained. "Are you alright?"

"Oh, yeah, I'm fine."

"Are you sure?"

"I am fine."

-x-

"…So, Rei," went Ritsuko to the albino girl as she sat inside the repaired Unit-01, "how does it feel to be back in Unit-01 now that it's fully repaired?"

"It smells like Ikari," she expressed. "That is a good thing, is it not?"

"Yeah," said Misato. "It's a good thing."

Four months since the last attack, but some of the personnel didn't want to forget that the Third Child was dead because of NERV as a whole and not because of the actions of a few. Not even Asuka wanted to forget her role in baiting him to take on the Angel just because of the high synchronization.

"Still no luck with finding a new sub-commander?" Hyuga asked Misato.

"No, and Fuyutsuki has relocated to Sapporo."

"What about the rumors of the Unit-04 incident?"

"Still reviewing what happened."

The Evangelion Unit-04 incident. Not really much of an incident as it was a near-nightmare. As they were installing what was left of the power source of the Fourth Angel into the latest Eva made in the US, the NERV branch in Nevada almost caused a catastrophe when the core began to overheat. This prompted the American government to discontinue their involvement with NERV following their initial demand to build Units-03 and 04, no longer convinced that any research involving the Evas was truly beneficial to the people, especially since it caused the death of a child, which was a violation of the No Child Left Behind Law; due to the declining birth rate after Second Impact, any child, even one related to a megalomaniac with no heart, was just as invaluable to the world as money because they had to be the ones to lead what was left of the human race into whatever future was left to take, not the previous generation that had failed the world. And it was only NERV's special protection that kept the paramilitary agency from being disbanded and put to pasture for this infraction and any others that stemmed from the exploitation of children.

 _Sometimes, I wonder why we even have that law,_ thought Ritsuko; in her mind, the law was worthless because it didn't do much but stress how invaluable children were because not many couples or families left in the world had any. _Children die everyday._

" _You and Commander Ikari are the ones that killed him,"_ she remembered Misato telling her, reminding her that, while she herself was responsible for her deceased ward, the faux-blond and leader of NERV were the ones directly responsible for the operation to force-salvage the Eva at the expense of the pilot's life. _"His blood is on your hands."_

-x-

It was quite the disappointment for the Elrics when they found out that Shinji was the only one able to take the State Alchemy Exam due to his three-year age difference. Apparently, it didn't matter how skilled the alchemist was if they were below the age of fourteen, the limited age requirement to enlist in the State Military.

Edward, however, got the feeling that it was mainly because Roy Mustang, the same State Alchemist that showed up in Resembool, suspected Alphonse and him of hiding something that they didn't want anyone else to know about. That…and because Shinji was there to clean up their mess before they could be found out.

" _What would it take for them to be allowed to take the exam with me, regardless of their age?"_ Shinji had asked the guy.

" _Luck,"_ Mustang stated.

 _Luck, huh?_ Shinji thought as he and the Elrics walked down the street. "I'd say that you two have a shot to get in on the exam now. Not a great shot, but a shot nonetheless."

"It's not like we have any luck, though," Alphonse expressed. "These State Alchemists are older and more experienced than we are."

"Maybe so, but you two aren't bound by the limitations they're bound by yet."

"What do you mean?" Edward asks him.

"If their alchemy is based specifically for fighting, then they're predictable. They can only use it to cause harm, more or less. They can't exhibit creativity in other fields, such as rebuilding. If alchemy is capable of causing harm, then it should also be capable of mending those harmed by it. What is it that you stress about in alchemy that aids in its study? To understand, to deconstruct and recreate? Take what you know you're capable of…and expand upon it."

"What about you?" Al asks him. "How can you be sure medical alchemy is the best way to go?"

"I don't, but I don't want to fight anyone, anymore. I've experienced enough pain to last me a lifetime. To not be able to see other possibilities in life beyond those of conflict is to admit to knowing only what you know is possible…and never trying to find other ways."

Then Ed had to consider that using alchemy for medical practices could be possible. If Shinji was able to generate for him a new arm to replace the one he lost to save Al's soul, then it could be possible to generate legs and even replacement organs through the science of alchemy.

 _If he can do that, it wouldn't be Human Transmutation at all,_ he accepted.

"…Help!" The three heard a woman scream, seeing a man with a bag running their way. "That man took my bag!"

Something shifted within Shinji…and he got in the way of the man.

Slice. He brandished his kunai and swung it horizontally when the guy got close enough, sending a streak of blood across the pavement as he fell to the ground.

"Aaaurgh!" He groaned, trying to get back.

Slam. Shinji approached him and put his left foot on his chest, sending him back down.

"I hope you can give me one reason not to cut you further," he told him, but it was the way he said it that took the Elrics by surprise.

It was like he was a completely different person, one full of anger and a desire to harm.

"Aaaurgh!" Shinji then shouted, bringing his kunai down on the guy.

"No!" He cried, closing his eyes.

But when he opened them again, he saw the blade had narrowly missed his head by an inch to the left of his head; the fourteen-year-old boy had deliberately missed on killing him.

"Consider yourself lucky enough to continue living," Shinji told him and then took the bag from him and returned it to the woman.

"Thank you," she praised him.

-x-

"…Are you sure that it was a boy that did this cut?" Doctor Knox asked the men from the Military Police as he examined the injury of the man that was arrested.

"Three witnesses say it was a fourteen-year-old boy that injured this man to get back a woman's purse," one of them explained. "Is the injury fatal?"

"No, but that's the weird thing," Dr. Knox confessed. "The cut looks more like an incision than a stab or slice. And because it was made on his lower abdomen, it should've killed him, but he needs no stitching, and there's hardly a loss of blood."

"He ain't human," the purse-snatcher expressed. "His eyes and voice. He looked like he wanted to kill me, but held back. He sounded like he wanted to kill me, but held back. He's not normal."

"If he went and stabbed you in the left eye, you wouldn't be normal," the other police officer stated.

"I looked him right in the eyes and saw a giant with a horn surrounded by fire!"

Outside the examination room, Shinji and the Elrics, after Shinji gave his statement, wondered why the Military Police still wanted to see him.

"So you cut a purse-snatcher," said Edward. "You did a civil service. Last time I checked, people get thanked a little for helping to stop a crime that started some time ago."

"How does the military deal with civilians that take the law into their own hands?" Shinji questions. "I mean, what, do they get a reprimand, a slap on the wrist, a few hours of community service or do time in the brig?"

"Maybe it's got something to do with the way you look," suggested Al.

"What does my appearance have to do with anything I do?"

It was only because Shinji didn't know about the Ishval Civil War or the aftermath that resulted from the outcome that the Elrics gave him the benefit of the doubt. Whatever history he knew from his world would be vastly different from the history here…and over a century from today in a new era that hasn't come…and where alchemy was nonexistent.

"Most Amestrians don't take kindly to Ishvalans," Ed stated. "It's also difficult for them to accept people of different ethnicities based on their appearances, cultures and social customs."

"That sounds like discrimination and racism, if you ask me," Shinji responded. "If you dislike someone simply because they don't look like you do or even live the way you do or follow a belief structure that you can't understand, that shouldn't permit anyone, not even a more-civilized society, to inflict grievous harm upon them. Even in the darkest of suffering, one can still find peace in their sleep, but for those that willingly, intentionally, without any hesitation or remorse, choose to inflict suffering onto others, their minds can never enjoy that same peace when they sleep. Not with a guilty conscience that will remain with them until the day they die or until they atone for their sins."

"Speaking from experience?"

"I wish."

-x-

"…So…I heard you got asked to join NERV yesterday," said Asuka to Toji on the school rooftop during lunch.

The school jock, looking at the track across the yard, turned to face the redhead and responded, "What's it to you? What, are you going to tell me that I'm unnecessary because they have you and Rei?"

"No. I was actually going to say that you shouldn't bother with NERV because of the last attack."

"Why? NERV needs people to pilot the Evas and there are still Angels out there."

"You have any family?"

"What has that to do what I was asked?"

"All he had left was his father…and that man doesn't bat an eyelash for him, and he made the choice that killed him. You still have people in your life, so you should walk away from the Eva while you still have them."

It was the first time Asuka had ever said something of this sort to someone asked to become an Eva pilot without a reason based on her pride. She felt that the least likely to want to become pilots were those that actually had someone to lose, not those that had nothing left to lose. Even if it was viewed as a hindrance to NERV, the redhead didn't want the same people that were responsible for Shinji's death to be responsible for some little girl's big brother if something bad happened to him; she might've thought of Shinji as a jerk and embarrassment to the Eva program, but Asuka never wanted his or any other death on her conscience. If she could keep this stooge from the inside of a plug, then maybe she could begin to move on from this grief over what happened to Shinji.

-x-

It was not what Shinji had anticipated when he was asked to sit inside an interrogation room and wait for a few minutes. But then the door opened again…and an elderly man with an eyepatch and the woman whose purse was snatched came inside.

"You must have no idea who I am, do you?" The elder man questioned.

"Sorry, sir, but no," he answered back.

"My name is King Bradley…and I'm the Fuhrer of Amestris."

"I'm sorry, sir. Fuhrer…as in…like a president?"

"That's right."

Shinji, simply because of his culture's requirement of him doing so, stood up and bowed to the man.

"My apologies, sir," he uttered; if he were in the presence of the Emperor of Japan, he'd be doing the same thing.

"No apologies necessary, young man," King Bradley told him. "I should actually be thanking you for your public service. You stopped a man from stealing my wife's purse."

Shinji bowed again, this time to Mrs. Bradley. To be in the presence of a government leader was one thing, but to be in the presence of a relative of a government leader, such as a spouse or child, was another thing.

"Ma'am," he greeted.

"You're the man applying for the State Alchemy Exam," she responded.

"Yes, I am. Although I didn't expect to be the only one out the three of us that came to Central and found out that they stress over age, regardless of how skilled an alchemist is."

"Oh, that's right, you were with two boys when you stopped that man."

"The Elrics, Edward and Alphonse. They are, more or less, my responsibility outside of Resembool."

"You? But you're barely fifteen."

"I was merely asked by their guardian…and I couldn't really say no."

-x-

"You're late," the woman, the same woman that Shinji noticed when he arrived in Central, heard a voice say to her in the darkness. "I'm guessing the alchemists you discovered weren't up to par with the State Alchemists here?"

"Not even close," she uttered, looking to her left in the darkness, seeing the silhouette of an oversized individual and an average-sized nimble person with dreadlocks. "There is something else, too. We might have a problem here in Central."

"A problem? A threat?" The nimble person asked.

"A kid. He arrived earlier today. I can't prove it, but he might be dangerous if left to his independence."

"Can I eat him?" The oversized individual asked her, sounding like a man drooling heavily.

"I'll go see him first…and then we'll see what happens," the nimble person responded. "He might not be much of a problem if dealt with by me."

-x-

"Hey, you never mentioned the kid you saw in Resembool when you went there was the same one that stopped that guy from stealing Mrs. Bradley's purse," Mustang heard Hughes say to him, having found out from someone else who found out from someone else. "He's the one you suspect of hiding something from the State?"

"There's just something about him that is…unusual for someone his age," he told Hughes. "It's hardly his appearance as it is his awareness. I asked about him, but there seems to be no records of him ever living in Resembool…or anywhere else in Amestris, for that matter."

"Well, Amestris is a big place…and any place elsewhere is bound to be bigger. He could be from outside the country."

"How do you explain him getting across the borders, then? Someone had to have seen him and kept a record…unless he just fell out of the sky somewhere above Resembool."

"Or it's just likely that some soldiers took pity on a bunch of nomads looking to integrate themselves into Amestrian society a few years ago, and he was one of them. Whatever happens will happen in due time, and what wants to be known will be known."

But that didn't stop Mustang from suspecting that the Ikari boy knew something and was keeping quiet about it. He would have to keep an eye out for him until he slipped up and revealed his secrets, whatever they were, since he appeared to be within the Fuhrer's good graces for helping his wife. In a month's time, the teen…and the Elrics would be taking the Alchemy Exam.

 _Luck was clearly on his side today,_ he thought, now wanting to see how the kid could fare in the exam.

To be continued…

A/N: Just to confirm for some of you, Shinji shall exhibit a degree of split personality, in which one side will demonstrate a propensity towards violence, but will be influenced by a desire to help the people that get hurt, and the other side will be the one seeking to use alchemy for medical purposes. Some of the inspiration for what Shinji will do in the future came from an episode of CW's _Black Lightning_ series and the their theme song.


	3. Sleep-Transmuting

Creation began on 02-23-18

Creation ended on 05-18-18

Neon Genesis Evangelion

The Living Alchemist: Sleep-Transmuting

"…I still had no idea that was the Fuhrer's wife," said Shinji to Alphonse as they were led to a house down the street by Major Maes Hughes.

"Even so, it's not everyday that someone actually tries to steal from the Fuhrer's family," Al told him. "You must have a guardian angel on your side…or you're just lucky."

Shinji stopped walking for a moment and took out his kunai, looking down at it.

"Luck or a guardian angel, huh?" He sighed. _Or maybe it's something else altogether different._

"Whoa," gasped Edward, looking at the house that served as the residence of Shou Tucker, the Sewing-Life Alchemist. "This place is huge!"

Shinji looked up at the residence and silently marveled at its elegance and simplicity, something he didn't see much of in Tokyo-3, reminded that it was a fortress city, not a regular one where people just did as they have done for years or had a military power so close to them.

"Oofph!" He snapped back to the present as he heard Edward yell and fall to the grassy ground. "Get off me, mutt!"

It was a dog that had tackled Ed to the ground.

Shinji had never seen a dog before, let alone one as massive as this one; Second Impact had caused a major decrease in certain animal species, including most canine breeds. He had to admit that he was quite surprised that any dog could grow to such a height. It was as big as a mini-refrigerator!

The dog, taking notice of Shinji, got off Ed and ran over towards him.

"Arrf! Arrf!" It barked at him, sitting down in front of him.

"Hello," he greeted the dog.

"Alexander, don't bother them!" The three looked towards the house and saw a little girl by an open door, probably around three or four years of age, with long, brownish hair and blue eyes.

To Shinji, if the Elrics were any younger, they could've been siblings or friends with this girl.

Behind the girl was a bespectacled man with short, brownish hair; most likely the girl's father.

"Gentlemen," the man greeted them.

-x-

Across the street from the Tucker estate, observing the teen boy that held a strange knife in his right hand, an androgynous teen wearing an oversized coat and with dark green dreadlocks was wondering why his female partner felt that this kid would be a problem for them, as he didn't seem much of a threat at all.

"If anything, this kid's a pushover," he uttered, watching as the boy walked into the house.

-x-

"…You'll have to excuse the mess," Shou Tucker informed his guests as they walked around fallen book piles. "We generally lack a woman's touch around here. Oh, I'm sorry, that was sexist of me to say that."

"It's quite alright," said Shinji in response. "I'm used to messes like this."

That would've been odd, even for Shinji to say, even though it was the truth; Misato could barely keep house for herself, and he didn't want to think about how Asuka would likely fare on her own.

"Arrf!" Alexander barked again as he sat down, beside the side of the couch that Shinji sat on.

"That's odd," Shou stated. "Alexander…seems to have taken a shine to you."

"Uh…maybe it's because I'm just a friendly face," Shinji suggested. "I'm trying to keep away from bad situations that involve violence. Dogs can sense the good in people."

"And yet, you seek to become a State Alchemist. All three of you, in fact. Why the aspiration? What is your desired profession?"

"Applying alchemy for medical purposes. If such a thing were possible, then it would be possible to use alchemy to regenerate major injuries to the body, such as severe burns or lost limbs."

"But…wouldn't that be similar to Human Transmutation?"

"No, although it does sound similar. Human Transmutation revolves around using alchemy to alter the body, mind and soul, not preserve them. I don't seek to change the bodies, minds or souls of anyone. I want to believe that alchemy can improve medicine and make people's lives easier. What is the purpose of your alchemic profession, Mr. Tucker?"

This caught the Elrics' attention when Shinji asked him; they didn't know what Shou Tucker did to earn his designation as the Sewing-Life Alchemist.

"It is…Equivalent Exchange, as it is stated between alchemists," Shinji clarified; since he shared his reason for wanting to be a State Alchemist, it was only fair that Shou explained what his alchemy revolved around in turn.

"Are you familiar with the branch of alchemy involving the creation of chimeras?" Shou asked them.

Shinji's eyes widened momentarily before returning to normal.

"Yeah," he answered, "the military-permitted branch of alchemy to combine animals of different species in order to create new organisms. Chimeric organisms. Although following the principles of Human Transmutation, it is not considered such because it uses animals instead of people, thereby skirting the taboo, bending it without actually breaking it…unless the alchemist in question tries to do so with humans in addition to animals, regardless of whether or not it's with the person's permission."

"Yes, that's right. However, it's built upon unsteady foundations comprised of dead-ends and false starts. But it's seen some significant strides in the later years since it was permitted by the State Military to be practiced."

"Really?" Edward asked, curious. "How so?"

"I was able to create a chimera able to speak and understand human speech."

"Well, that's…that's an astronomical feat," Shinji praised him.

-x-

"…Who is this?" Asuka asked, pointing to the albino boy that looked similar to the First Child, only with gray hair instead of blue.

"He's the Fourth Child, since the original candidate declined the position," explained Misato to her; after Toji Suzuhara turned down the offer to pilot the Eva, NERV had to accept the pilot candidate the Committee had been training for three months after Shinji had been found and made to pilot Unit-01.

"Kaworu Nagisa, ladies," the albino boy greeted. "Nice to meet you."

Asuka found him to be very off-putting. It might've had something to do with his albinism, but she didn't trust him one bit.

"Welcome to NERV," she told him.

-x-

"…Ed fell asleep?" Shinji asked Alphonse, noticing the elder Elric brother passed out in front of a book.

"Yeah," he answered him, then yawned. "It's easy to forget that we're still young."

Shinji took the book Ed was reading and placed a bookmark in it before closing it.

"Ahh…" He yawned, setting the book down. "I gotta crash and burn before I collapse. Good night."

"Good night."

Leaving the brothers alone and returning to his room, Shinji fell onto his bed and let sleep claim him.

 _Yeah,_ he thought, his mind drifting apart, _it is easy to forget that we're still young. It's also easy to forget that we have so much potential to do good with our lives. If we let it go to waste, we're just wasting our lives away. Sloth. How do I know all of this? How did I obtain such knowledge without trying? Why do I have such knowledge?_

He suddenly found himself on a dark street, on dark rooftops, clapping his hands, making things rise from out of the ground and walls. In front of him were people that he didn't recognize. They looked like they embraced black, except for the skinny, lean and muscular individual with dark green hair shaped into long, wispy strands; there was something about the guy or girl that seemed…almost dangerous.

"…Get him," the woman that was with them told the green-haired individual and a fat, bald man with white eyes and huge arms.

"Can I eat him?" The fat man asked, and then moved at inhuman speed towards him.

 _What is this?_ Shinji wondered, now seeing himself dodging the fat man and green-haired figure, revealed to be an androgynous boy. _Am I dreaming this?_

FLASH! Shinji now found himself in a vast, white place, standing in front of…a young man that looked just like himself, right down to the face.

"You're not going crazy," the man told him, sounding like Shinji, but with a hint of rage. "I am you. You are I. We are one and the same. Your potential towards life, your brutality towards those that disgrace life, that take it for granted in the worst ways."

"What do you mean?" He asked him.

"You fought for the Elrics and their lives when you undid their Human Transmutation. I guess you could say that you unknowingly developed a split personality; the personality you often exhibit that pertains to your goal to use alchemy for medical purposes…and I being the personality that represents your held-back potential to use alchemy to protect yourself and others. I've been around since the day you arrived to that house, ever since the moment Alphonse begged you to help Edward…and I'll be around for long as you are alive. Embrace your life here…and know you have no limits to what you're capable of achieving."

The other Shinji then faded away, leaving Shinji alone. He soon felt tired. More tired than before he fell to sleep, and then he fell backwards, barely able to hear the voices around him.

"…You'll pay for this, kid!"

"…I wasn't able to eat him…"

"…We'll get him when he's alone again…"

"Ahh," he groaned as he awoke to the next day, feeling better. "That was exactly what I needed."

He vacated the room and stepped into the kitchen, noticing that it was unreasonably underused, like people ate very little within the finite area.

Grumble. He felt his gut growl.

Flexing his right hand, Shinji decided to get to work on breakfast.

-x-

"…He wasn't like what I had expected at all, Lust," said Envy to the woman that saw Shinji first, sitting on a console in an old laboratory, fuming. "He nearly killed us when he touched us."

"I couldn't eat him," whined Gluttony as he sat on the floor. "He kept moving out of my reach."

"The master will not be pleased to know that a rogue element is loose among the humans," Lust uttered, unsure of how to deal with the situation without drawing too much attention to themselves.

-x-

"…Something smells good," Nina expressed as she and the Elrics stepped into the kitchen where Shinji was setting the table with various dishes that looked too good to be true.

"Good morning, everyone," Shinji greeted them, setting down the pitcher of orange juice. "Hungry?"

"Starving!" Edward responded, grabbing a saucer holding rice balls and eating one. "Mmm! What is this? Some sort of pastry?"

"Rice balls. A dish I grew up with eating every now and then."

"Are most of these dishes from where you're from, Shinji?" Alphonse asked.

"Uh, yeah. I just made what came to mind that could be made using what was around."

"What is this dish called?" Nina asked him, pointing to a small bowl of soup.

"Miso soup."

Before she could partake of the dish, Alexander ran in and licked the bowl clean of the soup.

"Alexander!" She gasped.

"Well," sighed Shinji, not the least bit upset about what the dog did, "miso soup is healthy to eat."

-x-

"…Looks like a fight started here and spread across the rooftops and down the street," said Hughes to Mustang, evaluating the series of minor damage and transmutations that were present. "Who creates statues like these, though?"

One such statue was about the height of an average person, but was humanoid with what looked like armor and a horn atop its head. In three different alleyways were pillars of concrete that stuck out the walls and ground with other statues of the same sort, as though they were a calling card or something.

"Are we looking for a bunch of alchemists with no affiliation to the State Military?" Hawkeye suggested, finding a transmuted spear on the ground.

"Maybe," responded someone else, "or maybe just someone looking to make a name for themselves."

"All I know for certain is that whoever did this made a big mess and we have to clean up after them," Mustang stated, looking down at the patch of ground and saw the markings reminiscent of a transmutation circle. "What the Hell is this?"

The rest of the unit came over and looked down at the circle.

-x-

The synchronization test between the pilots and the Evas went on without a problem. Although it was still difficult for some of the NERV personnel to forget about the deceased Third Child and move on, they were making progress. For the most part, that was. Other members felt they would never forget what happened.

"Asuka's sync ratio has risen by three percent," Maya informed Ritsuko. "It's an improvement from the last test."

"And Rei's synchronization has only risen by one percent," the faux-blond responded, "but look at the Fourth Child's sync ratio."

Kaworu Nagisa, unlike the girls or the late Shinji Ikari, had an impressive synchronization of eighty-two percent. Slightly higher than any of them had ever gotten before. And this was only his first attempt at synchronization with an Eva prior to arriving at NERV.

"Is there a glitch in the system?" Misato asked Maya.

"No, ma'am, everything is running the way they're supposed to," she answered.

-x-

"…What happened out here?" Edward questioned as he, Alphonse and Shinji were walking to the store when they noticed several signs of damage done to either the streets or the sides of several buildings going down a few blocks.

"The military think that a wayward alchemist was up to no good last night," a lady informed them.

"Why would any alchemist do this?" Shinji asked.

"Who knows? Not all alchemists are stable."

 _Not all alchemists, huh?_ He thought; something in the back of his head was trying to tell him that he might've belonged in the alchemical category of those that weren't stable. _Stability. Everyone needs it, but few people get it._

"Someone has weird taste in art," said Edward as Shinji and Alphonse looked further down the street and saw a statue on the sidewalk.

Shinji stopped walking and almost dropped his bag of groceries upon realization that the statue was the spitting image of Evangelion Unit-01!

"Are you okay, Shinji?" Alphonse asked him.

"Uh, yeah," he lied, giving a fake smile. "We should be heading back now."

He didn't want to think it, but Shinji was starting to suspect that he was the wayward alchemist from last night, except he had no memory of leaving out after he fell to sleep.

-x-

Mustang had no doubt about the circle they found. It was clearly one designed for Human Transmutation, a forbidden practice by Amestris. The only question was who would put such a circle on the street? There were no reports of people going missing, the soldiers had done door-to-door check-ups, and everyone was accounted for. But he suspected someone was responsible…and up to something they shouldn't have been.

"We could be looking at a practical joke or some new cult that just popped up," suggested Hughes.

"Maybe," Mustang responded, "but if this is someone's idea of a joke, they're probably the only ones laughing right now."

-x-

The night was still. Lights spread across the city gave it a small glow of calm. A lone figure stood atop a roof, overlooking the streets.

"Can I eat him this time?" A voice uttered, and the figure turned around, seeing three individuals from the previous night.

"This time, leave no trace of him," responded the woman, who raised her left hand up to reveal long blades where her fingers should've been.

The fat man charged towards the figure who, due to the illumination of the moonlight, was revealed to be Shinji Ikari, dressed in a white shirt and black slacks, but also wearing a long, black coat, but was unable to grab him as he sidestepped out of the way, causing him to fall off the roof.

The woman shot her finger blades at him, but he clapped his hands together and slammed them to the ground, triggering a small tremor that traveled up to her and the androgynous guy. The guy jumped away, but the woman's feet became stuck to the ground.

Shinji, or at least someone that looked like him, transmuted a javelin from the next rooftop as he ran across and jumped from the last roof on the block, using it to stabilize his landing on the ground below. Then, once he looked up and saw the three were still after him, he made a hand gesture to come after him as he resumed running.

"Where does he think he's going?" The androgynous man asked.

The woman looked up ahead of the empty street the boy was running, and noticed the only thing down that stretch of road was…

"The Fifth Laboratory," she concluded.

"All we have are chimera guarding the inside, but he has to get inside first."

They looked down at the fat man, who came down the road, chasing after the boy, ravenous and angry.

"Gluttony, stop!" The woman shouted, but the fat man continued to go after him.

-x-

"Kensuke Aida?" The classroom teacher uttered, taking attendance for the day. "Kensuke Aida? Is Kensuke Aida here today?"

Asuka looked at the empty desk where the otaku normally sat with his camera, wondering where the stooge ran off.

"Do you know where he is?" She asked the other stooge.

"Most likely off in the wilderness again, playing soldier," Toji suggested; ever since they found out that Shinji was killed, Kensuke seemed to be doing whatever he could to keep from grieving over the loss of their friend.

"I heard a rumor that he requested a transfer out of the city," said Hikari to them.

It wouldn't be the first time any number of students were transferred out of the city after each attack, since it was becoming a greater fact that Tokyo-3 no longer held any capacity to stand as a fortress city.

-x-

"…Ahh…" Shinji groaned as he awoke to the next day, feeling like he just had recovered from a hangover if he had been drinking. "What a weird dream."

As he slept, he had the most unusual dream about running in the night from three people, some strange, dog-like creatures, avoiding a cave-in inside of a large building…and then, there was getting a compliment from a guy that was somehow trapped there that told him to do something about a skull used to keep him in check. But when he got out of bed, he noticed a small sack near the chair by the door. It was big enough to carry perhaps a human skull…and he worried that that's what was inside.

"Oh, man," he sighed, worried that his dreams were anything but dreams. "Please, don't be what I think you are."

He approached the sack and opened its top…and saw that it was a basketball, not a skull.

"A ball? Eh-heh-heh! It's just a ball. Heh-heh!" He expressed; he was getting worked up over nothing when he should've been stressing over the State Alchemist Exam. "I gotta think positive. Stay positive, Shinji. You want to be a State Alchemist so you can use alchemy for medical purposes."

But as he changed into his clothes for the day and left out his room, he neglected to check the ball. It was a basketball, but slightly larger than a standard-sized version. And had he held it from a different angle, he would've noticed a small mark that was a sign of a transmutation. It was as though the ball had been fabricated out of something else or was made from raw materials by someone that knew what they were doing.

-x-

It was the same culprit again, except this time, they managed to cause extensive damage to a condemned building that was housing secrets that were now brought to light. And this time, they left something else to be found in the building.

"This room looked like it was being used to conduct research into a forbidden practice, sir," said Hawkeye to Mustang as they evaluated the destruction caused by the small explosions from last night.

"I was thinking the same thing," he responded, looking at the red liquid that covered most of the floor, and then at the large statue of the horned figure that must've been the culprit's calling card of sorts. "What's this person's angle? The Phantom Alchemist? The Demonic Alchemist? The Mystery Alchemist? They constantly leave this figure behind as if to state they were here."

"Maybe we should ask the fat guy that they left for us," she suggested.

-x-

Envy was beyond enraged now. Not only had this kid exposed many things that Laboratory Five was supposed to keep hidden, but he had Lust and Gluttony restrained before he escaped. His only words during the entire time were, _"I know what you are. If I see you again, I will show you the wrath of life. This is for the people. This is for being alive."_ But what had Envy bothered by him was the way he said his threat to him; it sounded as though he were a completely different person, one full of rage and confidence in their abilities. He was starting to think that if this kid chose to the previous night he tried to get rid of him, he could've performed a transmutation meant to seal them away, effectively killing them.

But that wasn't the worst part of last night. No, the worst part about last night was that during the struggle, the boy unleashed Greed, who got away with several prisoners while Lust and Gluttony were apprehended. It was as though he did this to spite the Homunculi, to show them how much they were ineffective against him.

"It doesn't matter if he's gifted or protected," Envy stated, running through the woods. "He's still a lowly human…and he can still be killed. I will find a way to do it."

To be continued…

A/N: Part of what Envy heard was inspired by the lyrics to the theme song of _Black Lightning_ , and the statues found at both scenes were representations of Shinji's past, indicating that, despite his status as a result of the attempted Human Transmutation of the Elrics, he can't escape from it. How many of you suppose that Shinji, once he gets his status as a State Alchemist, will find an ally in Greed, stop Dante, and prevent things from happening like they did in the original anime series?


	4. Edge

Creation began on 05-18-18

Creation ended on 08-11-18

Neon Genesis Evangelion

The Living Alchemist: Edge

Brigadier General Basque Grand, the Iron Blood Alchemist, was enraged by the damages done to the fifth laboratory and how the secret research being conducted had now caught the attention of the Flame Alchemist's unit. There was no chance of him keeping it under wraps without incriminating himself for his own involvement in the research that was being performed.

"Whoever did this last night left these two as witnesses to the acts committed," a soldier stated to another soldier that showed up, as the two presumed culprits were carried.

Basque Grand could see how it took just eight men to carry the big, fat man that had large pieces of rebar sticking out of his shoulders and neck…but was still very much alive. It was the same with the young woman that was being carried away, as Grand could see that she had pieces of rebar penetrating her arms that had long fingers.

"You two are still very much alive, so can you answer this question?" Roy Mustang asked them. "Who did this to you? Was it an alchemist?"

"Oh, I'm afraid that's a secret I'm keeping to myself," the woman uttered, sounding unfazed by the fact that she had no usage of her arms. "They were quite the astonishing achiever. Where were they when you decided to do what you did in Ishval? They might've had more restraint than most of you lacked."

"I didn't get to eat him," said the fat man. "He got away from me again."

They were then removed from the scene.

"Sir, we're still examining the substance left behind," said Hawkeye to Mustang, "but it looks like it's alchemical in nature. Possibly, the substance was intended to amplify alchemic reactions."

Grand balled his fists as he left the scene; whatever was being found was out of his hands for the time being. He would have to find a way to get around the investigation, or at the very least shut it down.

-x-

"Who was that kid?" A woman asked a man that was sitting on a rock in the middle of the forest among others that didn't look as though they could fit in among normal people. "He looked like he was completely absent-minded."

"And those three people he was fighting," added a man dressed in black and white, carrying a sword, "were they really homunculi?"

"Yeah, they were," the man sitting on the rock explained. "As for that kid… I'm not sure who he was, but he was powerful…and had no fear of them… Whoever he is, he could prove to be an invaluable ally if we ever meet him again."

"Are you sure about that, Greed?" A short man with a lizard-like tail asked him. "You let him take your skull. What if he uses it against you if we see him again?"

"He seemed more focused on those three that were fighting him," a large man stated. "If the kid wanted to take on Greed, he would've done it before he got freed."

-x-

"…Aurgh!" Edward groaned as he placed the book he was reading down.

"If your head hurts, that's what happens when you think too hard," said Shinji, proceeding to the next page in the book he was reading.

"How can this much information be relevant to the Alchemy Exam?" He asked.

"How much of anything is relevant to anything? The exam is broken down into three courses: Written examination, physical evaluation, and practical evaluation. It's best to be prepared for everything than to be taken aback by anything."

Alphonse, who was also reading to prepare for the examination, agreed with Shinji and told his brother, "Better safe than sorry, Ed. We still have a few days before it starts, but so long as we prepare, we'll be ready when it does occur."

"Question, Shinji," Ed uttered. "How can you be so calm about the exam? You're older than we are, and you should be worried the most. You might have to be offensive if we go to war in the future."

"If it comes to that, I'll just be defensive by restraining people," he answered him. "I'm calm because I don't want to fight anyone, not even to save myself right now. I just want to be able to survive out here and be able to provide a simple service to the people with alchemy."

"Yet to become a State Alchemist, that will make it somewhat hard for some to accept you as a member of the military," Alphonse told him.

"Alchemists Be Thou For The People. It's the unofficial credo for all alchemists, but only those that choose to disregard it are the ones that desire more through the use of alchemy."

"And what more could be desired through alchemy?" Ed asked him.

"Power is a good example. The more power one has, the more control they possess, and power can be amassed in many forms. Powerful allies on your side that may owe you favors, access to resources unavailable to the people, immunity from the laws of society, a position in politics or the very military at your command. Power comes in more than one form and can be from anyplace in the world."

"If some alchemists want power, they'd likely be better off trying to obtain the Philosopher's Stone," suggested Al, as some alchemists were romantics for such a thing.

Shinji went wide-eyed, then looked at the younger Elric brother and stated, "It's nothing more than a myth that bestows false hope to people. A stone that gives false hope…but has real consequences if taken too far."

-x-

"…And he's in Central at this moment, possibly making his next move," said Envy to a woman reading a book on a desk; the homunculus had informed her of the recent encounter with the mystery alchemist that had incapacitated Lust and Gluttony and freed Greed from the fifth laboratory.

"This young man," she spoke up, closing the book, "what did he look like?"

Envy morphed into an exact duplicate of the boy that had defeated Lust and Gluttony and freed Greed.

"This is who they were," he revealed, his voice remaining the same.

"This can't be right," she expressed. "Even if it were just a coincidence, the resemblance this boy has is uncanny. The next time you see him, bring him to me."

"You speak as though you've seen him before."

"Someone that looked like him…and I killed them when they found out the truth about me."

-x-

 _"…I killed them when they found out the truth about me,"_ Shinji thought he heard a woman's voice as he looked down at his kunai.

"Huh?!" He went, looking up at the world around him as he sat on the front porch of the Tucker estate.

"What is that thing you have, Mr. Shinji Ikari?" He turned to his left and saw Nina with Alexander.

"Oh, this thing (he carefully holds up his kunai)? It's called a kunai. It's a…tool that I got when I met the Elrics."

It wasn't a complete lie, as he did get it after he met the brothers.

"It looks really pretty, but why do you look so oddly?"

"Oh, I'm just a heavy thinker sometimes, Nina. When people think too much, they stop paying attention to the world around them."

"That sounds…kinda sad."

Shinji gave a small smile.

"Yeah," he agreed with her, "it kinda is."

He put his kunai away and stood up.

"What are you doing out here?" He asked her. "It's too good a day out to be wondering what I'm doing here? You should be playing somewhere."

"There's nobody but Alexander to play with."

-x-

"He's trying for the State Alchemist Exam, Envy," King Bradley informed the androgynous shape-shifter on the rooftop of a building during the evening. "How could be up to something?"

"He smashed up the fifth laboratory," Envy explained, "left Lust and Gluttony to be found by those worthless military drones and set Greed free! The master wants him dealt with and handed over to her before he does something else."

"Like what? From what he expressed, he seeks to use alchemy for medical purposes. He doesn't seem to exhibit any capacity for fighting."

"I've fought with him, and he's a nimble bastard. You do whatever you have to, but make sure that he's apprehended and handed over to her."

"And what if he can be manipulated into getting the Philosopher's Stone?"

"I'll ask her about it, but if she's against it, hand him over."

-x-

Alchemists made it a priority to protect their research and ensure that nobody could steal their secrets for their own use, and Shinji figured his way of hiding his own attempt at researching the use of medical alchemy by simply relying on his native language; it turned out that there wasn't a single soul within Amestris that could read or even write Japanese. If nobody but him could understand the language, he had an advantage over other alchemists. He still chuckled when he tested Ed and Al with his initial attempt by writing, _"To be the best, you must stimulate your mind"_ and they couldn't understand it at all.

"Two days left until the exam," went Al.

"Yeah," responded Ed.

"You two should've played with Nina," Shinji told them. "You're not just young alchemists, you're young boys that should be out playing with other kids."

"Except we're not like other kids, Shinji," Ed pointed out.

"It was one mistake. One mistake doesn't show the world who you are and let others decide what you can or can't do. And it was resolved, so there's no muss or fuss."

Alphonse wondered why Edward had a harder time letting go of what they did before Shinji arrived. Their failed attempt to transmute their mother back to life was undone because he reversed the transmutation and even replaced Ed's lost arm, so it was though they never did what they did. He even cleaned up their mess so they wouldn't get in trouble. How hard was it to let go?

"What about you, Shinji?" Al asked. "Any mistakes you made that you don't let the world decide for you your capabilities?"

Setting his pen down, Shinji looked at the younger Elric and expressed, "My single greatest mistake…was never living."

"Never living?" Ed said, confused. "But…you're living right now."

"Living isn't as defined as existing. Existing, you just take up space in the world, seen by people…but they don't know who you are. Living, you laugh, you smile, you let the world know who you are as you try to find your place in it."

"That's a sad way to be," Al expressed.

"Such a way can be exhibited by homunculi, since they're just artificial beings with no ties to life. They pervert what is by being a step removed from life. If they're meant to be modeled after someone that used to live, it can create…instabilities in their mentalities. Knowing that they're not original…but mockeries of former people, intended to be them completely…can result in unpredictabilities nobody could anticipate."

Yet, it was only because they didn't know about these facts that Shinji knew made the brothers a little miserable about their attempt to commit Human Transmutation. If they had continued to do what they did that night, they would've just caused more problems for everyone, including their mother.

-x-

"…So, I heard that he left to a different city," Asuka told Toji during class time, referring to Kensuke. "Is this true?"

"Yeah," he answered her. "It turns out that he couldn't idealize the Eva any further if it was unable to keep anyone safe on the inside. I confronted him about it, and he just cried. First time I ever saw him cry about anyone. _'He was killed, and his own father doesn't say anything about what NERV did! How does a paramilitary agency just…disregard that it was their responsibility to keep him safe so he could keep them safe…and do something so reckless that it kills him?'_ That's what he asked me. I just told him that it was no different from friendly fire, and he tells me that it's the worst kind to befall anyone, to be harmed by the people you protect. He felt like Shinji was just left to thrown to the wolves…and couldn't deal with it. That's why he left."

Asuka didn't deny any of it. NERV had lost much of its credibility after that day and continued to lose credibility with each passing day. It was a mess that they made themselves and had a hard time getting around it.

"Everyone's drifting away," Toji stated.

"Yeah," she agreed with him.

At her desk, Rei pondered how much longer it would be until NERV was shut down and disbanded because of the loss of faith in the Evangelion program. While Commander Ikari was still in charge, it was mainly due to the fact that he was Shinji's father that the agency was facing a grim possibility in its future that made keeping it active almost impossible.

"My sister no longer feels safe here and wants to leave," went Toji to Asuka. "At this point in my life, I don't blame her for feeling helpless. I'd be, too, if I didn't have any friends left in this city."

-x-

Finally, the day of the Alchemy Exam had arrived. There were dozens of people, men and women, older than Shinji and the Elrics. They each had some skill in alchemy, all hoping to become more than simple people, servants to the military power that existed…in exchange for power, status and access to resources regular alchemists didn't have access to.

"Nervous?" Shinji asked Ed and Al as they stood among the others here to take the exam.

"I didn't think there were so many wanting to become State Alchemists," Alphonse stated.

"They all must have some skill," Ed suspected.

"The only edge they have against others…is the edge they don't use until at the last moment," Shinji informed them. "The ace in the hole, your final gambit."

"Best of luck to you," both brothers told him.

As they got set for the written evaluation, King Bradley watched from the top of his office as he received his orders from the master. If it was possible, manipulate the boy she had wanted brought to her to be eliminated…and if he couldn't be controlled, he would have to be erased, made to disappear from the very memory of Amestris. But there was something about this young man that had the leader of the nation…curious as to what he could do for the State Military. And he had to admit, there was something about this kid that, despite how his master felt towards him…that made him feel so much potential to great things.

To be continued…

A/N: Seriously, it doesn't seem like anyone, not even Dante, could read or write Japanese, so Shinji has at least one of his edges. The Iron Blood Alchemist has got problems and Lust and Gluttony are unknown at the moment. So Dante feels threatened by Shinji over something she did a long time ago, and fears that he'll do something to get her.


	5. Shadow Pact

Creation began on 08-13-18

Creation ended on 08-14-18

Neon Genesis Evangelion

The Living Alchemist: Shadow Pact

A/N: There is something that only one without a soul can do with someone not from around where they reside.

All he did was close his eyes as he needed to rest up for the next day, and Greed found himself in a dark place shrouded in mist.

"Where is this place?" He demanded.

"This place…is nowhere," a male voice responded as someone stepped of the shadows, "and everywhere, all at once."

It was the young man that broke into the chamber that housed him and kept him in suspended animation by means of his human remains' skull. He was wearing a dark coat over a dark blue shirt and dark pants, his eyes very dark and direct.

"Who are you?" Greed asked him.

"I am nobody right now," the boy responded. "I'm just a face without so much as a name that is my own and an alias. You, on the other hand, you know exactly who you are…and you're not trying to change that. So, who are you?"

"I am Greed."

"That's your name? Greed? No last name?"

"Whoever I used to be had a last name. I'm not who that man used to be."

"Very well, then, Greed. It is nice to make your acquaintance. You may very well be the first Homunculus that I actually respect and see as human. The other three I encountered, however, leave me adrift in whether or not any one of them can be saved."

"The one with the dark green hair in dreadlocks isn't someone that is looking to be saved. He's the oldest of the Homunculi…and isn't a very stable fellow."

"This one with dark green dreadlocks… He got a name?"

"He is Envy."

"Envy is his name? You Homunculi… Are all of named after the Seven Deadly Sins? Meaning there's seven of you out there?"

"As far as I know, there were seven of us, but that was a long time ago. There's only Gluttony, Envy and I, the only Homunculi I know of. I know nothing of the woman with the hands."

"The fat one, Gluttony, called her Lust. There are four of you that I've encountered, leaving only three unaccounted, assuming there are three left to be accounted for. Greed, Envy, Gluttony, Lust, Wrath, Sloth and Pride are the seven vices that corrupt human souls. Any number of these vices can leave any one person on a self-destructive path, but if swelled with all seven, there's no telling how corrupt the person can be."

"And what does this have to do with me?" Greed asked him.

"In due time, Greed, I'll want your help to do something that I will compensate you for immensely, and it's to go after the one behind the Homunculi."

"The one behind the Homunculi? What do you mean by that?"

"I'm talking about the one that made you, that keeps you or tries to control you. Homunculi can't exist unless an alchemist crosses the line and makes them. Exactly, what good can come out of creating Homunculi? To what benefit does creating them give the alchemist that chooses to do so? Human Transmutation creates repercussions that scar deep into the souls of others. People get maimed, physically and mentally, aberrations of life that are incomplete and aren't addressed or recognized as human, curiosity that triggers further repercussions unless put in check or stopped completely."

"Suppose that I knew something, what could you possibly give me that I'd even want?"

"Since you're not the same guy that was transmuted, you clearly don't seem interested in being human again, so I won't press that issue. You'd be among the only Homunculi that can be saved if I go after the person responsible for their existence. You get to live and enjoy the limits of your life without the fear of being hunted down, indulge in whatever desires your name entitles you to. Since you're Greed, you're clearly an avaricious person; you want whatever it is you desire. Money, status, women and all the other finer things in life that people take for granted. You want that, you get that."

Greed couldn't detect the slightest hint of deception from this kid. No hint of cruelty or malice, not even a shred of disgust that he seemed to have for the other Homunculi and the alchemists that used them. If anything, this seemed like someone that actually saw him as a person and not a monster…and was willing to let him remain as he was if it meant getting to the people responsible for monsters like him.

"I only know of one person that has attempted Human Transmutation more than once," he expressed, "and that's a woman by the name of Dante. She's the alchemist that made me what I am, and when I defected from her group, she had me locked away in that place for over a century. I couldn't stand being her pawn, being some sort of…attempt at trying to transmute people based on their emotions. Dante of the Deep Forest, one of aliases I knew her by. Last time I ever checked…and all that I remember…is that she lived in a manor located within a forest not far from where I am right now. It's probably where she got her alias Dante of the Deep Forest."

"Dante of the Deep Forest," Shinji repeated to himself. "Thank you, Greed. Do be careful out there for now. I have some things I must do to prepare for when I meet her myself. Stay out of sight of anyone looking for you and your allies. Life is precious and meant to be embraced. Any that is snuffed out is just a waste to the universe."

-x-

Waking up to the new day, Shinji, feeling like he had an unusual dream, but couldn't recall anything, got up and prepared to go cook breakfast for everyone else as it was another day to prepare for the State Alchemy Exam.

 _Why am I suddenly thinking about the Seven Deadly Sins?_ He wondered; he had rarely heard about the sins, but ended up learning a basic understanding of them after watching that American film that had a serial killer that chose his victims based on the sins. _Vanity is the worst sin, as people's arrogance will leave them paying a high price._

To be continued…

A/N: It would appear that somehow, Shinji's subconscious can communicate with the mind of Greed, and he had acquired information that will aid him in dealing with his future adversaries.


	6. Success

Creation began on 08-11-18

Creation ended on 09-07-18

Neon Genesis Evangelion

The Living Alchemist: Success

"…So, how did the first part go for you three?" Maes Hughes asked Shinji, Ed and Al as they walked out of the room where the written examination took place.

All three sighed as they slumped in a bench in the hall.

"I didn't expect for there to be a time limit," Ed groaned. "Over fifty questions…and I was eight questions behind from finishing."

"I finished mine within the limit," Al explained, "but what about the interview? Just how many people are supposed to be involved?"

"Shinji?" Hughes asked.

"For once, I'm glad I can comprehend all that I read," he stated. "It actually pays to know English."

"And you never understood it before?" Ed asked.

"When you live in one place where the language you know is standard, it's pointless to take up newer ones you might not use."

-x-

"So…all three of them were able to make the top twenty," went Riza to Mustang as the man was looking at the results of the written examination. "Is it that bad?"

"No," he responded to her, "but that Ikari… He rubs my head the wrong way. It's like he's hiding something from everyone."

"Or is it that you don't trust him to not have an agenda that threatens your own?"

"Yes, that, too. He's a wild one if we don't know what his intentions are."

-x-

"…Just be yourself when you go in there and answer them to the best of your ability," Shinji encouraged Al when it was his turn to be interviewed.

"Yeah, okay," Al responded as he turned to go into the room. _Oh, man._

"Be honest, Shinji," went Ed to him. "You don't think he'll pass, do you?"

"Whether or not he passes depends on his determination to get to the end of the journey you're on," he answered him, "but I believe he will pass if he's convinced he'll succeed."

"You're…so positive."

"Well, you have to have a positive personality if you expect to get anywhere. You want to use alchemy for defensive purposes, Al wants to use it for construction purposes, and I want to use it for medical purposes. We each need to be positive in order to get closer to our objective."

Ed then had to point out that Shinji's confidence seemed to stem a bit from him either wearing or twirling the kunai in his possession, which Shinji gave a childish expression in response to.

"There's no rule that says you can't rely on some sort of crutch," he defended, "and besides…this was my first transmutation. I like this kunai."

"Never knew any alchemist to take pride in their first transmutation."

"Everyone feels pride in something they did for the first time if they enjoy it. Winry showed me those items that you and Al transmuted. I'm impressed that you two were able to transmute a doll for her."

"Thank you. That was back when things were more…simpler."

"Back when reality didn't slap you so hard in the face?"

"Yeah… Did it ever do that with you?"

Shinji thought of how most of the time he was ever in Tokyo-3, reality was, every now and then, either because of the Angels, Asuka, the Eva or just his failing lack of a relationship with his father, slapping him hard in the face.

"Relentlessly," he expressed.

-x-

"…More families are leaving the city on account of their children no longer feeling safe here," went Maya to Shigeru and Hyuga while they were in the cafeteria during lunchtime.

"Yeah, and another handful of personnel have turned in their resignations," added Shigeru. "Their reasons for doing so were that they couldn't escape the feeling that…he was roaming the halls, haunting them, even though they weren't involved in what happened."

"Guilt by association," Hyuga stated. "Even if the majority of NERV didn't do anything to cause Shinji's death, the fact that they were affiliated with the agency that the minority were responsible for still makes them a target of the shame."

"And the China branch decided to disband, too," Maya informed them.

"This is insane."

"Everyday, this gets worse and worse. It won't be long before the UN decides to shut NERV down completely and we're all out of a job."

Suddenly, the alarms went off, indicating the bane of their existence had made its presence known once more and was intent on eliminating them.

"Oh, great," Hyuga muttered.

"Here we go again," Shigeru added.

-x-

"A chair with only three legs," Shinji spoke as he came into the room for his interview. "It shouldn't be able to stand, let alone support one's weight."

The people in charge of interviewing, including the Fuhrer himself, waited for him to sit in the chair, so he obliged them. It was quite unusual for such a chair that should've been unable to support his weight because of its configuration to be able to without any difficulty.

"Heh, only a true alchemist would be able to sit in the chair and maintain balance," King Bradley expressed to him. "You clearly possess the gift."

 _Of course, with alchemy, there is balance in everything transmuted,_ Shinji realized; as skilled as he was progressing in the art, he still had a ways to go before he was considered one of the best. _Balance in the materials required for the transmutation…the objects created during the transmutation…and the energy used in the transmutation. Everything must be balanced._

"So, tell us, why do you wish to be a State Alchemist?" King Bradley asked him.

Shinji's very answer would decide his future with the State Military. He needed to make his answer weigh heavily upon his objective.

"I've seen alchemy do many things in my short life after experiencing it," he started explaining his reason, "both for people and against people. I try to focus more on the positive outcomes created by alchemy, such as building and rebuilding, and if alchemy could be used to mend places and things…then it can be used to help mend lives maimed by war and violence."

"You believe it's possible for alchemy to be used…for medical purposes?" Roy Mustang questioned; he had never believed that alchemy could be used to save lives like how this young man was suggesting a day in his life.

"Nobody truly knows until they've tried every measure they can to see if they can get the results they're searching for," Shinji stated, since alchemy was also about trial and error. "It also means having to wade through mud and blood to get from one place to another."

-x-

This Angel was just out of their reach in outer space, looking like a massive, glowing, brachial creature. It was possibly larger than the Tenth Angel itself, only not as destructive.

"How are we supposed to defeat an Angel we can't even get near?" Asuka questioned, looking at the Angel on the screen; none of the weapons the Evas had were able to reach that far into space.

"Not even the Positron Rifle can reach that far," went Misato.

Ritsuko, already on the receiving end of most of the public opinions of NERV, sighed as she decided, since they were already screwed no matter what they did, that there was no point in keeping her silence.

"There is one weapon we have that can reach that far," she revealed.

"Oh, really? Well, then, where is it?" Asuka asked.

-x-

When the time came for the practical course of the exam, Shinji and the Elrics stood amongst the other candidates as one alchemist had transmuted a pillar from some of the raw materials laid out for them to use to impress the judges and fuhrer. Unfortunately, the guy that transmuted the pillar had collapsed on the ground after using too much energy in his attempt.

 _The power of alchemy is derived partially from the alchemist,_ thought Shinji as he pitied the guy that wouldn't make the cut to be a State Alchemist.

The next candidate transmuted a hydrogen balloon that clearly impressed some of the people present.

"How can we beat something like that to impress the judges?" Ed questions.

"How, indeed," Shinji expressed, wondering how he could impress the judges. _"Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty, and, to impress him, takes his multi-armed form and says, 'Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds'."_

Why Shinji chose now to think about that, he wasn't sure. He just felt desperate enough to think any random thought. But to gain success, he had to impress. He had to outdo the rest of the candidates, even if only by a small degree.

Snap! The pillar had snapped at the base due to the hydrogen balloon making contact with it and applying too much pressure against its upper proportions.

"Get back!" Someone yelled as it began to fall towards the candidates as they began to flee.

Shinji saw the guy that had transmuted the pillar still on the ground; his transmutation had clearly drained him of too much energy that he wasn't going anywhere, even to save his own life.

"Oh, for crying out loud," he groaned as he ran towards the falling pillar; even if he ran to get the man, there'd be no time to pull him out of harm's way, meaning he'd have to find a different method to save his life. "Aaaaurgh!"

Clap! He put his hands together and placed them on the falling pillar where the base broke, his hands glowing bluish-white as he began a transmutation of his own.

FLASH! The pillar crumbled into nothingness with the balloon…

When the light faded, everyone that was present and accounted for in the exam…saw Shinji standing in the middle of what had to be the most detailed, wooden model of some sort of city, with looming skyscrapers of the most unusual of architectural formations ever encountered. It surprised even the young teen in question, as he didn't anticipate his transmutation to turn out like this. At best, he was expecting wooden slabs or a small, wooden house, not what he realized to be an exact replica of Tokyo-3 when he first saw it rise from the ground.

"Unbelievable," Al expressed, immensely impressed by the transmutation.

"He's a prodigy of alchemy," added Ed, thinking that some of Shinji's imaginative details seemed somewhat like those of that horned, armored statue that had been on the street a few days ago. _Maybe that's where he got his inspiration._

"Is that even possible?" Mustang, who was present during the practical part of the exam, wondered aloud, referring to the fact that Shinji had performed a transmutation…without a circle.

"He doesn't have any gloves with circles on his hands," a woman that was among the candidates revealed. "He can transmute without circles!"

King Bradley stood up and looked down at the candidates.

"I do believe we've found one of our latest State Alchemists," he uttered, "and quite a gifted one, too."

Gasps and murmurs were made and heard all around Shinji, who couldn't believe he was able to pull it off at the exam.

"Whoa," he went.

-x-

"This had better work," Asuka told Ritsuko as Unit-02 stood in the southern part of the city with this giant, red spear in its hands, about to throw it like a javelin into the air towards the Angel.

"It'll work," the faux-blond stated; since they were already facing ridicule, it didn't matter if they used this weapon or not, and Gendo wasn't here to tell them not to use it, which he would've.

"Launching in three…two…one!" Asuka yelled, and then Unit-02 hurled the spear high into the sky.

The spear had reached escape velocity and collided with the Angel's AT-Field!

"Aaaaaaaaaahh!" The Angel shrieked as the spear began to pass through its field and itself.

"Blue pattern has vanished," Maya announced. "The Angel has been defeated."

Unfortunately, the price was high: The weapon they had used was the only one that they had and it was now entering the moon's orbit. It would be impossible to retrieve it right now.

 _I hope he was watching,_ thought Asuka, thinking about Shinji as she returned Unit-02 to the Geo-Front. _Nothing has been the same since he died. I thought I'd get some sense of satisfaction from killing this Angel…but it did absolutely nothing to lift my spirits. I killed an Angel on my own…and nothing has changed at all._

-x-

Looking up at the darkening sky, Shinji found himself thinking about the people he worked with back in Tokyo-3, having deduced that his spectacular transmutation was the result of a subconscious thought relating to his friends, classmates, co-pilots and guardian. He wondered if they were still fighting the Angels, protecting the city, or just living each day that comes and goes. It would've been nice just to know that they were doing alright.

"Was that your edge, Shinji?" Ed asked him as he reminded the teen that he was in the company of the brothers, Nina and Alexander.

"No, it wasn't," he answered him, turning to face him. "At that moment, my concern was just saving people from getting hurt or worse. I didn't even know I could do that, and I know alchemy because of you and Alphonse. How can alchemists trigger transmutations just by clapping their hands together?"

"Usually, they can't, Shinji," Al explained. "The ability to transmute without a circle isn't a common gift we have. There is our teacher, but we think the reason she's able to do it…was because of something she did some time ago."

Shinji looked around them and didn't see anyone nearby.

"Alchemic accidents," he uttered. "Alchemy can hurt as much as it can help people. Whatever the reason I'm able to do this now, surely, you two can do it, as well, despite your accident."

Every time he said "accident", it was code for "Human Transmutation", meaning that it was likely the reason their teacher was able to perform alchemy without circles was because she attempted it at some point in her past. This meant that if they had performed Human Transmutation, as well, then it was possible they could do it, too. In fact, Edward had done it himself once before, and that was to retrieve Alphonse's soul, but after Shinji undid their failed attempt by dealing with the homunculus they created and restored Al's body and gave Ed a new arm, neither brother had attempted to see if they could still do it.

"Whatever the case may be, tomorrow will be the continuation of the exam for you two," Shinji told them; he himself was just one of the alchemists selected to join the State Military. "You two still have a shot to get in, too, and I'll be rooting for the both of you."

"Thanks, Shinji," Al expressed his gratitude.

"Arf!" Alexander barked.

-x-

Gendo wasn't pleased as he sat in his office. About two hours ago, he had just finished taking flak from SEELE over what he was unable to prevent. The unauthorized use of the Spear of Longinus to defeat an Angel was held against him, as the spear had reached lunar orbit where it couldn't be retrieved by any means they had. And he was being pressured to get the paramilitary agency under control or else he'd be punished severely for his lack of progress.

"Nobody was authorized to use the Spear of Longinus, Dr. Akagi," he told Ritsuko, as she was present in front of his desk.

"None of the Evas' weapons could reach the Angel so long as it was outside our reach," she explained.

"With the exclusion of Fuyutsuki and the old men, the only other people that knew we had the Spear of Longinus…are in this room."

"With all due respect, sir, I've been getting the brunt of all the disgust and contempt that NERV has gotten ever since your son was killed. While I'm willing to accept that the pilots are expendable, I'm at the point in my life where I'm constantly reminded that the only reason I even made the decision to have all those bombs dropped into an Angel…was to get rid of it in order to salvage the Eva, not the pilot. The list of candidates has all but diminished, less people live in the city…and even lesser commute between here and wherever else they go to each day, and it's all because your son was killed. If I had known this was going to happen… I would've let Major Katsuragi find a solution if it meant getting rid of the Angel…without the use of the N² bombs. If using the spear meant getting rid of the Angel…then it was a decision I can live with making."

As the faux-blond turned to leave the office, Gendo was left to wonder how NERV had fallen so deep out of favor in such a short time. He chose to blame his son's ghost for the negativity, even though the boy hadn't done anything wrong.

 _Even in death, he's a pain in the ass,_ he thought.

-x-

"He can transmute without circles?" Envy questioned King Bradley that evening on the rooftop of Central Command. "Does this mean he made a Homunculus like us?"

"Not likely," Bradley expressed to him. "He had a physical evaluation during the exam…"

"And…"

"…He didn't have any signs of bodily impairment. Externally, he's not missing any part of him that would've been taken from him if he attempted Human Transmutation. Internally, he appears to have all his organs intact. If he did perform Human Transmutation, there would be a mark somewhere on him."

"And yet, you let him become a State Alchemist. If something goes off with him and he can't be managed, it'll be you that has to explain it to the master."

Still, Bradley couldn't help but be curious as to whom this Shinji Ikari was and what he was capable of. An alchemist that could perform transmutations without the circles necessary to facilitate the energy required…and without any trace of an injury that would've represented some degree of maiming…made for quite a find for them.

"Quite a success," he uttered to himself as Envy left.

To be continued…

A/N: The title was meant to juxtapose the different situations the characters were in. Basically, Shinji is able to achieve success in his exam by saving people, while back in Tokyo-3, the paramilitary agency known as NERV achieves success against another Angel. While I thought about it doing her some justice, I just couldn't picture Asuka celebrating any happiness over a victory against the Angel, even on her own, due to previous Angel attack having a heavy cost. If you disagree, explain why in your review after reading this. Peace.


	7. Compassion

Creation began on 09-07-18

Creation ended on 09-15-18

Neon Genesis Evangelion

The Living Alchemist: Compassion

"…You must be proud of your success, Ikari?" Shinji heard Mustang say to him, two days after the State Alchemist Exam was finished.

"I am," he responded, "but not as much as I'm proud of their success."

Further down the hallway of Central Command, Edward and Alphonse were still processing their discovery of having been accepted into the military as State Alchemists. Although Alphonse was going down in history as the youngest State Alchemist on account of being a year younger than Edward was, since the military had to accept that their age was irrelevant to their alchemic prowess that would be sure to improve as time passed for them. The night of Shinji's success, the Elric brothers had decided to see if they could perform alchemy without circles…and to their surprise, they could do it, making Shinji suspect that, despite having undone their failed attempt at Human Transmutation to bring their mother back to life and restored Ed's arm, the other results of their transmutation couldn't be undone.

 _If they saw what I saw that night,_ the State Alchemist teen thought, _it wouldn't be something that easy to forget. Anyone with a passion for alchemy would do anything they could, give anything they have, to even see half of what we saw._

Recalling his personal experience further, Shinji remembered the doors and what he saw once he was pulled into them. He saw…many things he never thought he could comprehend. It was…as though universal knowledge had been forced directly into his brain, which had most likely been the reason he was able to understand alchemy and everything associated with it. Knowledge and all the power associated with it…were now at his command.

"Personally, I think it's unusual that you three are capable of performing alchemic transmutations by simply clapping your hands together," Mustang expressed.

"How alchemists perform their alchemy is entirely up to them, Mr. Mustang," he responded. "I wouldn't call it a unique trait that only a rare few possess. Maybe a curse that carries a weight that will follow you to the ends of the world…and all the alchemist has to decide is how best to use it to their advantage. Do they hide it…or do they use it to serve others?"

Still, Mustang was bothered by the three. More so by the teen that sought to use alchemy for medical purposes than the brothers. The more he talked, the more he got the feeling that he was hiding something he didn't want anyone else to find out about.

 _What is your secret?_ He wondered.

-x-

Asuka felt crushed right now. She just found out from her friend, Hikari Horaki, that the pigtailed girl's father was moving his family away from Tokyo-3. It seemed like everyone was looking to escape the fortress city that was no longer feeling safe after what had happened. She didn't blame them, though; Tokyo-3 had lost much of its right to be called a safe city since it was the only place that the Angels seemed to attack all the time.

" _Why are they called Angels?"_ She remembered Shinji asking at one point in the past during the city-wide blackout when the Ninth Angel arrived. _"I mean, angels have always been viewed as people with wings and halos or as messengers from God. Why are we fighting monsters named after God's messengers?"_

 _I wish I had an answer back then,_ she thought, wishing she hadn't shot down his way of thinking because he didn't know anything. _The truth is, I don't know why they're called Angels, either. I don't know who decided to label them as such or why they decided now to attack us. I…I just don't know why, anymore._

As she sat at her desk while the teacher droned on and on about the aftermath of Second Impact, looking out the window again for the umpteenth time, Rei sighed at how empty the city seemed now…and how the people that chose to leave it seemed to be doing so in droves.

" _Why do you pilot the Eva, Ayanami?"_ She remembered Shinji asking her the night of the Fifth Angel attack.

 _I told him it was my link to everyone,_ she recalled, _except I don't feel linked to anyone, anymore._

-x-

"Obey the military," went Alphonse as he, Edward and Shinji walked down the hall towards the exit of Central Command after receiving their pocket watches that symbolized their status as State Alchemists.

"Don't create gold," said Edward.

"And don't create humans," finished Shinji, putting his watch into his pants' left pocket. "They don't seem too difficult to follow. All we have to do is make sure our moral compasses are always pointing north."

"That shouldn't be too difficult," said Al, "but now comes the hard part."

"Oh, there's a hard part?" Ed asked.

"Yeah: What are we to do now?"

"I don't know about you two, but I'm heading to the library," Shinji stated his intention. "I want to expand my knowledge by digging further into anatomy."

"I guess we'll head back to Tucker's, then," Al responded.

"Yeah, you should do that. Nina should enjoy your company more so than mine."

The three then separated once they got outside. All three State Alchemists…but with no direction to take due to having no sign of trouble the military was currently involved in, meaning they had all the time in the world right now to do other things.

Taking out his kunai to pass the time, Shinji smiled as he twirled the small blade in his hand while walking down the street.

"The world is yours," he uttered to himself.

Suddenly, he stopped in front of a back alley. A stench got into his nose that drew his attention into the alley. He followed it and found the source.

"Oh, God," he shuddered at the sight of the dead body, falling to his knees in front of it.

It was a woman. Or rather, all that was left of a woman. She had likely been young, wore a lime-green dress that was in shreds, and had strands of ebony hair.

"Who did this to you?" He wondered, removing his coat and draping it over what was left of her head and face as he got up to get the authorities; he might've been a State Alchemist, but he wasn't the law.

-x-

"…So, he was the first one to find the body like this?" Knox asked Mustang as Shinji sat against the wall across the street from where the victim was found.

"That's what he told us," Mustang answered. "You think it's the same assailant again?"

"Yeah, no doubt about it… This makes her number thirty-seven within the last three years…and the fifth one this year."

For the first time in his brief career as a State Alchemist, Shinji was glad Ed and Al weren't here to see this, even if there was a chance they could stomach the sight of blood and gore. It was the first time he ever saw a dead body…and he was horrified by it.

"Shinji Ikari," Dr. Knox spoke to him, and he looked up.

"Yes, sir?" He asked.

"I think we have enough from you to investigate this now. You may go."

"Thank you, sir."

Shinji got up and walked away.

"You should get used to seeing a lot of this later on," the doctor told him, and Shinji turned back to face him. "It comes with the territory of a State Alchemist."

"Only the ones that choose to cross the line that shouldn't be," Shinji countered. "I hope I don't ever. It would leave a bad taste in my mouth. What is your oath as a doctor?"

"First do no harm."

"That's written in shades of grey, but it's stressed by those that follow the path of a healer."

"And an alchemist that seeks to use alchemy for healing?"

"One that has either seen enough violence or hasn't experienced enough of it… Tell me…do you know who she is? I mean, who was she?"

"We don't know yet. We…we don't think she had anyone, though."

"You won't know for sure…until you question everyone that saw her…and until someone asks about her whereabouts. And you find the person responsible for this depravity…they need to know how it feels to have their life ripped from their possession. If they don't respect life, they don't deserve life."

Suddenly, it was like Knox was looking at someone that wasn't afraid of the law and had something to do about what was done to this woman.

"Look, I know you just became a State Alchemist, but don't do something reckless. Let the authorities handle this."

"Never mind them, sir, I'll find the one responsible myself and beat them into a coma before handing them over," Shinji responded as he walked away.

 _How old is this kid, fourteen?_ Knox wondered. _He sounds like he's been through some other tragedy he couldn't escape from without some sort of repercussion._

"You don't believe him, do you?" Mustang asked him.

"Honestly, I only believe one part of what he said…and that's the part where he said he'd find the one responsible himself. He sounds like he knows exactly what he has to do."

"Doesn't he rub you the wrong way?"

"It sounds more like you're looking for a reason to see him as anything but what he intends to be for himself. A State Alchemist that doesn't want to harm anyone, but needs the resources he can't get elsewhere to get to his desired goal… If he can do that, it might actually save the rest of you from the blight you've become after the war."

"I doubt he can do that."

-x-

Nothing was following the original scenario, no matter how Gendo looked at it. Each time he reviewed his copy of the unpublished Dead Sea Scrolls, he found nothing that was in order. After the Twelfth Angel, the Thirteenth Angel was supposed to arrive, "masquerading as a blight of humanity", according to the scrolls, causing an inescapable suffering for the "horned one's" slave. Then, the Fourteenth Angel was to appear and "further the discord", but none of this had happened. Instead, they had to deal with the "winged one of light" and lost the Spear of Longinus too early.

 _Even if we were to implement the Instrumentality Project, it wouldn't change anything because he was killed before he could complete his role in the scenario,_ he thought as he sat in his office. _You just had to go and get yourself killed, you worthless brat!_

-x-

"…So, I hear that you stumbled onto the case involving a serial killer, Mr. Ikari," went Shou Tucker to Shinji as the young alchemist was reviewing the limited information the military police had on the unknown assailant responsible in his room.

"Yeah," he responded, trying to figure out how the killer chooses their victims and was able to leave them in places where they weren't murdered. "So far, each murder took place here in Central, so whoever's behind this is clearly a resident of the city. What drives a person to do what they do like this to others?"

"Maybe it was another alchemist, perhaps?"

Shinji looked up at Shou and expressed, "I doubt that an alchemist had something to do with this. Using alchemy to kill people doesn't make all alchemists killers; it just means they're capable of it if they chose to, which would make them simple killers. What would an alchemist gain from doing something like this? What would be the point in doing something like this? There's no benefit, no comprehension, no advancement, nothing. It's just senseless depravity that can drive a person crazy the more they try to wrap their head around it."

"Speaking from personal experience?"

"No… But I've seen enough of what goes on to know that it's everywhere you turn, imbedded within society and history: The degradation…and brutality…of human evil."

Shou got the feeling that this young man was very disturbed by the fact that he saw a dead body and seemed driven to find a sense of closure by finding the people responsible for the murder.

"Say, don't you have a renewal assessment coming up soon?" Shinji asked him; no doubt while he was studying with the Elrics, the young teen had learned that State Alchemists had to submit an annual assessment report of their research results to maintain their access to military-provided services. "How do you intend to overcome that obstacle on your path to progress?"

"I have no idea yet," Shou responded, "but the Brigadier General will be on my case about it if I don't do something to impress my superiors."

"Which Brigadier General, Mr. Tucker? There are several individuals with that ranking within the military."

"I mean, Basque Grand."

"The man addressed by some as the Iron Blood Alchemist?"

"Yes."

Shinji thought about the guy for a moment, recalling how he was also present during his interview in the exam, but shuddered in disgust. Personally, the guy just made Shinji feel disgusted with him, wondering if people like him end up like that through age development or as a result of the last war this country went through. Whichever way it was, Shinji simply didn't see the Iron Blood Alchemist as anything other than a man that had no sense of morality. No, he saw the guy…as an obstacle.

"I don't understand how someone like him could be an alchemist," Shinji told him.

"He's more soldier than alchemist, interested in advancing his position rather than helping the people. It is part of the military profession that a State Alchemist can advance from the rank of Major through their service in the army."

"The greater your rank is, the greater your influence will be."

"Yeah, that's right."

Shinji sighed and returned to what he was researching on the case.

"Best of luck to you on your assessment," he told Shou.

"Thank you, Shinji," Shou responded as he walked away.

 _People can use alchemy to harm others,_ Shinji accepted, _but still, the question wouldn't be how they can…but why would they? Why would anyone use alchemy to hurt people?_

-x-

"…So, he's made it his priority to track down this serial killer of women?" King Bradley asked Mustang, who was trying to get Shinji removed from the case to protect the integrity of the investigation. "That wouldn't be a bad way for him to start out on his career."

"You're actually going to let him go ahead with this?" Mustang questioned. "We still don't know anything about him beyond what he was willing to put down on his information forms. There's still nothing on his date of birth, excluding the month and day, his ethnicity or nationality, not even how he got here. For all we know, he could be a spy for the Ishvalans."

King Bradley looked at him as he sat down at his desk, looking as though a line had been crossed by Mustang.

"You don't know that," he told him, "and why would Ishval use a teenage boy that doesn't have red eyes or dark skin to infiltrate the Amestrian military? Whatever his intentions, however he goes about his involvement in the case, it's up to young Ikari to prove his mettle and earn his place among the military."

Mustang was at a loss over this. Whatever the Fuhrer saw in this boy was beyond him. If there was something about him that intrigued him, it was clearly something nobody else could see.

"Even if it goes and kills him?" He asked Bradley.

"If you feel that he needs someone to keep an eye on him, you are authorized to assign a security detail to him," Bradley reminded him, making it clear to the Flame Alchemist that Shinji was to stay on the case, regardless of what other people thought about him doing so.

"Yes, sir," he responded.

-x-

"Whoa!" Nina gasped as Al transmuted a large horse from the ground on the front yard of her house. "That is so neat!"

"Then how about this over here?" Ed asked her, clapping his hands together and slamming them to the ground, transmuting a larger horse with wings on its sides.

"Oh, come on, you two!" Shinji, sitting on the front steps as he watched them while looking at the last case file related to the string of murders plaguing the city. "There's no competition here! Not unless it's a battle assessment! Then it's a competition!"

A minute later, Shinji noticed a car pulling up on the street, stopping in front of the Tucker estate. Its doors opened up to reveal two people in military attire, a young man and woman, and they stepped onto the estate grounds.

"Excuse us, but are you Shinji Ikari?" The man asked the young teen.

"Yes, I am," he answered. "Who are you?"

"We're your security detail assigned by Lieutenant Colonel Roy Mustang," answered the woman, and then she introduced herself. "Second Lieutenant Maria Ross."

"Sargent Denny Brosh," the man introduced himself.

"Okay, nice to meet you two, but why, exactly, do I need a security detail? I'm not being targeted on by anyone."

"All we really know is that you're looking into the investigation of the mysterious slayings and that Lieutenant Colonel Mustang assigned us to keep watch over you," Maria Ross explained, "for your own protection."

"Somehow, I doubt I'll need it in the end, but knowing the way this military ranking works, Mr. Mustang's my superior, so I must accept you as my security detail. Well, as you can see, I'm just sitting here reading this case file in order to try and find something that might've been missed by the military police…while watching the Elric brothers play with Ms. Nina Tucker. No danger present here."

They looked over at the brothers and suddenly became confused.

"They're State Alchemists, too?" Denny Brosh asked him.

"Yes, sir, the youngest ever in history," he answered.

"But…they're just kids like yourself," Maria Ross stated.

"Not in the eyes of the State Military regarding the alchemists that join up, but, yes, they are. To each, their own reason for wanting to go down this path, and theirs was to become better than they were before so they could support themselves and some friends of theirs back in Resembool. Mine is to use alchemy to heal injuries, such as ruptured organs and regenerate missing or damaged limbs."

"You sound like someone I used to hear about a few years ago, during the Ishval Civil War," Maria Ross uttered. "I think his name was…Tim Marcoh. He was a doctor that joined the State Military as an alchemist because he wanted to help people more through his alchemy…but then he went AWOL after the war ended. Some believe he was a traitor because of how the war resulted in so many lives taken."

"And what do you believe, Ms. Ross?" Shinji asked her.

"If I were him…I'd done the same thing. You join a group to do something good for the people…but you end up doing the complete opposite of what you intended to do. A large handful of people in the State Military left after the war. Some of them couldn't take the fact that it was insane to fight against people that were angry for what caused the war to begin with and that the Ishvalans were justified in their anger."

Shinji had read the official report of the cause of the war, about how an Amestrian soldier accidently shot and killed an Ishvalan child. If it had been his kid, he'd be angry and demand retribution if justice was denied. And then he learned how the State Alchemists were used to end the war…but ended up with a bad reputation by most of the people inside and outside the alchemy community for being labeled human weapons.

"PTSD can do that to people after something as harsh as war," he expressed, "especially if they don't get the counseling they need to cope with the psychological strain of their own involvement. There's sleepless nights, survivor's guilt, depression, regret, suicidal thoughts and so on. How long ago was the war?"

"It went on for about almost a decade," Denny answered him, a little confused at how this young man could be so…bright.

"I only did a crash course on the immediate history of Amestris, but tell me something: Is this country a constant participant of conflict…or does conflict come after its people over something that can be resolved without the use of violence?"

"Amestris is… Now that you mention it, I'm not sure how to describe the country. Ever since King Bradley became the fuhrer, it's been one war after another."

 _Constant war, huh? If that's true, then Amestris is not as peaceful as it seems on the surface._

Shinji then returned to reading the file he had…and may had found something a few other cases could've simply overlooked.

"It looks like you two get to earn your paychecks today," he told them.

"We get to earn our what?" Maria asked, confused.

-x-

"…What do you mean, the scrolls have been altered?" SEELE 01 demanded during the next meeting between the council members.

"I reviewed the scrolls," explained SEELE 06 to them, "and something has shifted to put all of mankind into…a rut, if you will."

"A rut, you say?" SEELE 10 questioned. "Elaborate."

"With the lost of Unit-01's pilot, the goal for Human Instrumentality has been for naught. The Thirteenth and Fourteenth Angels will not arise as a consequence of his demise. The pilot of Unit-02 was responsible for the defeat of the Fifteenth Angel with the Lance of Longinus, and with its defeat in this order, the scrolls' original design has come undone."

"Meaning…" SEELE 03 asked.

"We're stuck in this evolutionary dead-end. The Fifteenth Angel was the last Angel. Tabris has gone missing from NERV HQ, we can't retrieve the lance, and even if the Mass Production Evangelions are completed, they're only good as bio-weapons."

"So, the Third Child was an integral requirement in the scenario, despite the fact that the pilots are expendable?" SEELE 01 questioned.

"Yes. Out of the pilots NERV could've gone through until they were no longer necessary, he was the only one they couldn't replace, according to the scrolls. His very presence aided to move the scenario on its desired course. Because he was killed during the Twelfth Angel incident in an attempt to salvage the Eva, the original design of the scenario, the pattern that the Angels would come in order to challenge mankind, everything we striven for… It has all come undone with his death…and there's no way to rectify any of it."

There was a long silence within the council; each member was processing this new information at their own pace. There was anger within their minds, desires to blame who they felt was the most responsible for this inescapable predicament. Along with a high measure of contempt towards each other, they felt entombed within a metaphorical grave while still alive, and suffocating with frustration.

"Whose fault is this more than others?" SEELE 12 asked.

"Doctor Ritsuko Akagi initiated the operation to force-salvage Unit-01 from the Twelfth Angel," answered SEELE 02, "but it was Commander Gendo Rokubungi-Ikari that permitted her to do so, making him most directly responsible."

"Ikari," went SEELE 01 in anger. "Because of him, everything we sacrificed everything for has all been for naught. We shall have him atone…with his death."

-x-

"It's crazy," went Asuka in front of the tombstone of Shinji. "I thought I'd get some satisfaction from killing an Angel on my own…but I didn't. Nothing's the same…because you're not here. Those other two stooge friends of yours have left the city, Hikari has left the city, and everyone else's leaving the city after you got killed. Even that Fourth Child, Kaworu Nagisa, has gone missing. What kind of person leaves a note that says they have to leave and live or stay and die?"

The silence of the fact that she was in a cemetery, alone, talking to herself…because she wished she was talking to him…was getting to her.

"I couldn't imagine how your death would go and affect everyone because of what happened, you know," she told the tombstone. "I don't think it has much to do with that law as it does the fact that you were forced into piloting the Eva right from the very start, with no idea of what you were getting into. If I…if I ever saw you again…I'd just say that I'm sorry for everything, Shinji. It should've been me in that Angel, maybe then, things would be different."

She sat down in from of the grave now.

"It'd be nice just to hear your voice again, no matter what it is you say."

-x-

 _"It'd be nice just to hear your voice again, no matter what you say,"_ a voice, identical to Asuka's, echoed in Shinji's mind, and he turned his head around to see if anyone was behind him, seeing nobody.

 _It'd be nice to see all of you again, too,_ he thought, turning back to his front on the sidewalk, being led by his security detail.

"Is something wrong, Major Ikari?" Maria asked him.

"Nothing," he responded. "Just old memories…and please, call me Shinji. I may be a major, but there may come a time where titles and seniorities won't matter. Speak freely to me as you would to any other person."

"Uh… Yes, sir. I mean, yes, Shinji."

"This is it," Denny told Shinji, showing him a butcher shop. "Why did you want to come here?"

"It's just a pointless hunch…until I can confirm it," he responded again. "But I'll tell you this. All the victims had this in common: They looked as though they were being chopped up, not stabbed. Butchers often use their knives to chop through meat."

"You think our culprit is someone in the butchery business?" Maria suspected.

"It's only a theory…because there's something else I need to see in order to confirm it."

They stepped into the butcher shop and didn't see anything out of the ordinary. Of course, they weren't supposed to see anything unusual. It would've been too easy.

"Hello?" Shinji called as he approached the front display of several different cuts of meat that were partially refrigerated, and saw a small bell atop it.

Ding! He struck it, waiting for a response, but nobody showed up.

"What are the hours for this place?" He asked Maria and Denny.

"It's open from seven in the morning till ten in the evening," Denny answered him, and then checked his watch. "It's only six-fifteen."

"I'd hate to be suspicious, but I want to talk to this Barry Stein."

"The way you talk right now, you make it sound as though he's the one we're after," Maria told him, wanting to disbelieve that one of Central City's resident butchers was a serial killer of women. "You don't actually think that, do you, Shinji?"

Turning to face her, he had a look that spoke more than his voice could; the seriousness in his eyes, the sternness of his tightened jaw, it made him seem older and more hardened to the world around them.

"A butcher shop left unattended to, a business owner seemingly absent," he replied, "and just one last piece of the puzzle to be confirmed for me to give my exact response to your question, Ms. Ross. What do we really know about Barry Stein? The more we know about him, the less there is to suspect about him."

"He's just a simple butcher that's been around for eight years, mostly keeps to himself all the time, a widower, no family. He only has his job to look forward to each day."

Shinji had a look of deep thought before he returned his gaze back to Denny.

"How long was he married?" He asked him.

"About five years."

"And when did his wife die?"

"Around three years ago, if I recall correctly; her death was an accident."

"How'd she die?"

"The police report said she was…self-diced," Maria stated.

"Diced?"

"Inside a meat grinder, I mean."

"Ugh."

Shinji now had a sickening image of getting killed by a meat grinder in his head that he couldn't shake off. He leaned against the refrigerated display of meats…and realization hit him again.

"Refrigeration," he uttered.

"What?" They asked him.

"In some of the police reports, the bodies were said to look as though they had been thawing out a little, indicating that someone had frozen them before moving them to where they'd be found. Didn't last year introduce the first series of refrigerated trucks for the meat and produce businesses in Central?"

Maria and Denny both had a look of suspicion as they recalled that the previous year did showcase a series of refrigerated vehicles for food shop owners to use to carry their goods across the city to different markets. Even Barry Stein had access to one for his chopped meat. And they did hear small talk among the military police about how some of the female victims did seem thawed where they were found, places where there wasn't a freezer big enough to hide a body and could be moved around.

"Why can't it just this alchemist I heard was responsible for the Lab Five incident that's behind this instead of suspecting a butcher?" Denny suggested.

"Why would an alchemist have to kill someone like this?" Shinji asked him. "I get that not many people have a lot of love for alchemists that carry a military license, even for their involvement in the last war, but not every alchemist would or could do something like this. Not without an justifiable reason…and there is no reason that points to an alchemist, and I'm not saying this because I'm an alchemist. I'm saying this because we don't know for sure until we find Mr. Stein, as he's now a suspect."

-x-

"…Wait a minute, when did the UN decide this?" Misato questioned, finding out from Kaji that, to the horror of what she thought wasn't likely to happen so soon, that NERV was being disbanded.

"They're, apparently, convinced that the Angel Asuka took out was the last one," he explained as they were in Central Dogma, "and now want to shut us down."

"Except we don't know if that was the last Angel."

"So, you're saying that eleven Angels, each one more terrifying than the last one, aren't enough? They're convinced that it was the last one…and don't want to continue this over the unlikely possibility that it wasn't. They're giving us until the end of the month to clear out completely."

This was just unexpected. NERV was a UN-sanctioned paramilitary organization tasked with fighting the Angels, and if there were no more Angels left to fight, there was no longer any further need of the organization. No further need for the Evas, the MAGI, not even the children.

"What do you think are the chances this has nothing to do with Shinji's death?" She asked him.

"I think it has more to do with Commander Ikari's failure to handle the Angels more thoroughly, but…yeah, Shinji getting killed may also be a factor, even though the children getting killed was expected to be unavoidable, no matter what we did to try and keep that from happening," he answered her. "What's more, over half the city's been abandoned by the civilians. You might as well put up a sign that says the place is a hot spot and get out while you still can."

"Yeah," she agreed with him, though more on the hot spot suggestion than the leaving part. "If something like this had happened earlier, Shinji would've probably been relieved to have to no longer pilot the Eva."

Meanwhile, in his office, Gendo had just received a message from SEELE that with NERV now being shut down, his very use to them was over…and that he should try to hide somewhere…while he was still breathing.

 _So, they're going to kill me because their scenario is no longer viable?_ He thought, looking at his right hand. _I didn't kill the Third Child, but they hold me responsible for allowing Dr. Akagi to use all those N² bombs to destroy the Angel and salvage Unit-01._

But try as he might to redirect the blame of his own involvement in the incident, Gendo couldn't escape the fact that he let Dr. Akagi do it, so it was more his fault than it was her own for Shinji being dead and the scenario for Human Instrumentality being voided. This was the only reason NERV was being disbanded. This was the only reason SEELE wanted him dead now. And worse, he was the only one they wanted dead; they didn't feel any fear from other people that had worked so closely with NERV, like Akagi and Fuyutsuki, so they were ignored.

His hand, which once had the Adam embryo, was deprived of the Seed of Life, as it had disappeared a long time ago after the Twelfth Angel incident, leaving on the scarred outline where it had been grafted.

Even Lilith, despite regaining her legs after many years since the creation of Unit-01, began to show degeneration in her body, indicating that she was dying.

 _How did things get so wrong here, Yui?_ He wondered.

-x-

They waited across the street from the butcher shop for Barry to return; it wasn't much of a stakeout, but Shinji didn't want to risk losing sight of the man once he saw him. Also, it kept him from having to think about other things for the time being…or thinking about other people.

"You're unusually quiet, Shinji," Maria told the boy in the back of the car.

"People are quiet when they think, Ms. Ross," he responded, keeping his eyes on the butcher shop. "Of course, whatever it is they're thinking about is up to interpretation."

"Well, what are you thinking about?" Denny asked him.

"Just some people I knew a while ago, wondering what they're currently doing, how they're currently doing, and where they are."

"I guess they're from wherever you're from?" Maria asked.

"Yeah, you could say that," he answered her. "Sometimes, I'd wish for time away from them, but instead, I'd get that and space."

"Why don't you try contacting them?"

"If I could, I would."

"Let me guess," went Denny, "no means of communication where you're from, right?"

"Yeah," Shinji lied with his half-truth; because he was in a different place and time (along with the fact that he was clearly in another dimension), with earlier variations of the technology he knew from his own time being more advanced, communication between here and there was not only unlikely to happen, it was impossible.

"What brought you all the way to Amestris, if you don't mind my asking?" Maria uttered, curious about why someone like Shinji would leave wherever it was he was from to come to a country like this one.

"A while back…I was involved in something my father was doing," he spoke in another half-truth, "something he knew was wrong, but didn't care about the morality of it. He wanted to fight people I had no quarrel with because I didn't even know them, along with two girls my age. For a while, I did as I was told, but I couldn't stomach the brutality of what he was forcing upon me. So, when an opportunity presented itself, I up and left home…even though it didn't feel like home. That's how I wound up here and met the Elrics."

"Sorry to hear that," Denny told him.

"But it's okay. I told myself that any life I find here will be better than what I had there. So, whatever possible nightmares await me in the future, the unwanted violence of my past…is a dream compared to them. I just wouldn't be able to see some of the people I left behind one last time, letting them know that I didn't forget about them."

Suddenly, a large truck drove up the street and into a back alley beside the butcher shop.

"That's Barry Stein's truck," Maria uttered and then got out of the car. "If we're not back in five minutes, that's your sign to send for backup, Shinji."

Before he could respond that it was unnecessary, his security detail had gone into the alley.

 _Even if they're packing firearms, they don't know what this man is capable of,_ Shinji thought, unwilling to let these two get hurt just to help him confirm whether or not the man was their culprit behind the murders of over three dozen women, and got out to pursue them.

To be continued…

A/N: Hopefully, by the time of the next chapter, you'll get to hear Shinji use his official State Alchemist designation that will make him one day respected by the people and feared by anyone serving Dante.


	8. Turn Pain into Power, Hurt into Survival

Creation began on 09-15-18

Creation ended on 10-01-18

Neon Genesis Evangelion

The Living Alchemist: Turn Pain into Power, Hurt into Survival

The bothersome stench of meat hanging in the air, the stinging sensation of a bruised face, and the fear of failure as Shinji came to and saw that he was surrounded by animal carcasses preserved for distribution, seeing Maria and Denny strapped into chairs across from where he was, also strapped to a chair. There was a grinding noise being made, and he turned to his left, seeing a man sharpening a blade.

"Hey," he uttered to the man, but his voice didn't sound loud enough. "HEY!"

The man stopped sharpening and turned to face him.

"Oh, you're awake now," he greeted, and Shinji found his expression to be crazy because the guy made no attempt to hide it.

The blade he was sharpening was a cleaver, now glistening as he held it up to be seen.

"Why, Mr. Stein?" Shinji asked him.

"Huh?"

"Why? Your actions have clearly answered my suspicions that a butcher was responsible for these murders…but not a reason or motive for the drive. You're clearly the killer, but there's no understanding of your reason for being the cause of so much pain. If you're going to kill me, anyway, you can at least explain your reasons for committing such acts of depravity."

"You call it depravity, I call it choice," Barry expressed, holding up a sharpening rod. "I guess it all started when I killed my wife by accident. We were arguing over some nonsense…and I punched her in the face. She slipped and fell into our grinder. I didn't mean for it to happen, but when I saw her getting diced… I never thought it was possible for a person to end up like that…and I wanted to experience that again…and again…and again. There's something about hacking away at people that's so exhilarating and terrifying that you go to such lengths to understand every layer of it."

"So, your wife's unintentional murder sparked your psychopathy? You were traumatized by her murder to the point that you chose to murder other women…just so that you could relive it? I've heard of worse reasons. Some people actually wanted to believe that it was an alchemist that was the cause of these deaths."

"Oh, that's hilarious."

"You're not going to get away with this," Maria warned Barry, getting his attention. "The military will be looking for us, and you will be charged with capital offenses."

Barry approached her…and then stabbed her in her right leg with the sharpening rod.

"Aaaaurgh!" She screamed.

"Maybe, but not before I get three more kills," he told her, bringing his cleaver over his head. "I'll at least go to my grave knowing that I killed a pair of nobodies and a State Alchemist!"

FLASH! A bright light from behind Barry caught their attention and the butcher turned to face Shinji, who was now standing up, holding a metal rod, looking enraged.

"You've killed your last victim, Barry Stein," he uttered, his voice sounding darker, raising the rod up at him. "I'm taking you down."

"You take me down? What can you possibly do to me?"

-x-

"…I can't believe Shinji was actually working on this case," Alphonse told Edward as they had decided to look into the case Shinji was investigating. "This is insane."

"Someone actually did this to multiple women…and he's looking for the person responsible," Ed responded, looking at a picture of a female corpse. "Good God."

Knock-knock-knock! Someone knocked on the door outside of Shinji's room, and the brothers turned to face Nina, who was with her father…and the Flame Alchemist, who seemed bothered by something serious.

"Have either of you seen Major Ikari?" He asked them.

"No," they answered him.

"He left about an hour-and-a-half ago with his security detail," Shou explained to him.

"Sargent Brosh was instructed to call in case there was an update in the investigation."

"Maybe they're still following a lead somewhere," Al suggested to the Flame Alchemist.

"With Major Ikari, that leaves a lot open to discussion, especially since all three of you demonstrate the same ability."

Of course being told that left the Elrics suspecting that this man was suspicious of the three. More so on Shinji than them, but they were sworn to secrecy not to discuss that night or its aftermath and reversal. Because Shinji had gone to extremes to keep them out of trouble with the State Military, they owed it to him to never speak of their attempt to anyone, no matter what happened to any of them. So long as they kept the truth secret, they weren't hurting anyone because what happened wasn't meant to be repeated or echoed…and they had to keep Shinji's own secret safe.

"You sound like you don't trust him," Ed told Mustang.

"With anyone just starting out their careers with the State Military, everyone new is looked at with suspicion," he responded, and then walked away.

 _If that's true, then why do I get the feeling that you're especially suspicious of Shinji?_ Al wondered, worried that this man was going to be after Shinji more than anyone else in order to find out whatever there was to know about him, no matter what they did.

-x-

When one of Barry's butcher knives struck one of the ceiling lights, everything within the back of the shop was obscured by the constant flickering. This caused Denny, who had been set free by Shinji earlier to cut free Maria, and Maria herself, to see only bits of what seemed unusual because it wasn't making any sense.

"What in the name of…" Maria questioned, but wasn't sure what she was seeing.

At first, she thought she saw Barry chop off one of Shinji's arms, but then it looked like Shinji had dodged and punched Barry in the face.

Denny thought he saw Barry get sent flying by Shinji, but it could've been Shinji knocking aside a large piece of meat.

"Aaaurgh! Urgh! Omfph!" They heard grunting.

Shinji, his face partially obscured by the blood that poured from his forehead, had transmuted a gauntlet over his right arm and knocked Barry across the back of the room before grabbing his leg and lifting up to a hook.

"Aaaurgh!" He yelled, and punched him hard in the face, letting him spin a little as he had done what he intended to do with the man.

Clap! He put his hands together and then slammed them onto the floor, transmuting a pair of chains that grabbed Barry's arms and bound them to the ground.

Barry, unsure of what he just experienced, looked at the upside-down kid and had to wonder out loud, "What are you?"

Shinji lowered to meet his face and responded, "I'm the guy that just caught and beat you senseless, you wretched and depraved meat sack. I could kill you, but there's been enough death. Whether the State Military executes you or not for your crimes, you will never walk the path of freedom again for the rest of your days…and you will never experience your sick pleasures ever again, either."

When Shinji walked away, the lights stopped flickering and everything seemed normal. But what wasn't normal was the fact that his actions weren't fully understood by his security detail.

"Are you two, alright?" He asked them.

"We're fine, thanks," Maria answered him, but was worried about his condition.

Shinji looked at her leg and sighed.

"Try to relax," he instructed her as he clapped his hands and placed them on her injury.

A small flash of light came and Maria felt some discomfort for a second before it ceased. When Shinji removed his hands, the injury she had was gone, and so was the pain.

"Thank you," she praised him.

"You're welcome," he responded.

-x-

When the military police got word of Barry Stein being the serial killer and that Major Ikari had been the one to apprehend him in his own shop, Shinji's very involvement in the solved case had made him the talk of the military. But there were some holes in the case because they couldn't understand how Shinji was able to apprehend him so effectively when it seemed as though the butcher was more than capable of hacking away at him and neither Sargent Brosh nor Second Lieutenant Ross could explain what they had witnessed accurately.

" _We're not sure what we saw in there,"_ Ross had explained when she gave her statement. _"Shinji… I mean, Major Ikari…fought Mr. Stein and apprehended him. That's as much as I could see on account of the flickering light."_

When Sargent Brosh gave his statement, it was pretty much the same, which made Mustang even more suspicious of Shinji. Even the confession from Barry Stein that confirmed that he was the killer was odd, as the killer seemed afraid of Shinji than angry at being caught.

" _I don't know where you found this kid, but he ain't right,"_ he had said during his recorded confession. _"He could've killed me right then and there, but chose not to. The way he looked at me, even when his face was half-smeared in his own blood, it was like he was a monster, the worst monster to have ever been encountered before. He ain't human. I don't know what he is, but he isn't human."_

"The military police will be talking about this for a few days," Mustang heard Hawkeye say to him as he finished reading the final report in his office.

"Yeah," he agreed with her, setting it down. "Where is Major Ikari now?"

"According to Second Lieutenant Ross, Major Ikari had asked for the location of Central Cemetery, something about paying his respects."

-x-

With a list of the names from the thirty-seven victims of Barry Stein and the location of the cemetery, Shinji had set down flowers on their graves, ending with the last victims.

"I helped the military police catch the guy responsible for your deaths," he addressed the grave of the woman he found in the back alley. "He's scheduled for the firing squad in another hour after being sentenced for his seventy-four charges. Even if they decided not to execute him, he'd still have thirty-seven life sentences hanging over his head. I hope you'll be at peace knowing this, ma'am."

He bowed his head and walked away. A soft breeze swept past his neck and he stopped for a brief moment, smiling.

-x-

"…Hey, Shinji, you got mail from people wanting to thank you for catching the bad man," went Nina to Shinji as he was reading a book on human anatomy, holding a stack of letters in her hands.

"Thank you, Nina," he praised her as he set the book down to accept the letters, seeing that there was a note atop them that wasn't related to the aftermath of the closed case. "It would seem that my presence is required at Central Command."

"Good luck out there!" Nina cheered him.

"Thank you again."

-x-

"…I'm surprised that you're not letting your success go to your head," said Mustang to Shinji as soon as he arrived to Central Command. "How do you feel?"

"Good," he answered the Flame Alchemist.

"Good?"

"I helped find the guy responsible and he's answered for his sins, I went to the cemetery and paid my respects to the deceased, and now I'm putting it behind me. It's good to have done something as right as this."

"Okay. Well, I'm not sure if it's truly luck or just some sort of guardian angel…or even some degree of intimidation or respect, but you're clearly going places, Ikari. You should be careful, though. There are some within the military that will be after your secrets for their own benefit."

Shinji tilted his head slightly to the left, wondering if he was supposed to feel threatened by Mustang or not. Whichever way the pendulum was swinging for him, he would have to be on his guard around the man; even if he had nothing to truly hide, he had to keep the Elrics safe.

"One other thing," Mustang said, and took something out of his desk. "Fuhrer Bradley finally found the best title to go with your State Alchemist license. I actually find it odd that he went to great lengths choose this for someone like you."

It was a packet with the Amestrian symbol on it.

Shinji accepted it and opened it to reveal a certificate that seemed important to have Bradley's signature on it.

" _We give the name 'Living' to thee Shinji Ikari, in the name of the Fuhrer King Bradley,"_ he read, which sounded confusing when he looked at Mustang. "Living?"

"Yeah," he responded. "Along with the pocket watch, each State Alchemist is given a symbolic second name depending on their talents or traits. I don't understand why or even how, but that's the designation he chose for you, Ikari. You're the Living Alchemist."

 _I'm the Living Alchemist, huh?_ Shinji thought, and nodded in acceptance of his codename. "It sounds positive. Please, let the Fuhrer know I like the way it sounds on my tongue."

As he left, Mustang pondered why Bradley chose such a name for Shinji, since it made no sense to label any State Alchemist with a word that designated mere existence. Codenames like Flame, which dealt with fire-based alchemy, Iron Blood, Silver or even Fullmetal dealing with the manipulation of metal or stone, or even Sewing-Life, which dealt with the chimeric branch of alchemy made more sense because they dealt with something one did. It made absolutely no sense to use Living as a codename…unless it was some sort of a joke or it had a meaning unknown to him.

"The Living Alchemist," he repeated, looking out the window behind him. "Sounds more like an alchemist with something to live for."

-x-

"Hey, Ayanami," went Asuka to the albino girl that was lying in a hospital bed after barely surviving a car accident in the city.

Rei, with a broken left arm and right leg, looked at the redhead that had been informed of the accident and wondered what else had happened while she was incapacitated.

"Commander Ikari?" She asked her.

"He didn't make it," Asuka revealed, turning away; unlike the girl, Gendo Ikari was not as fortunate due to what was a clear indication that his death wasn't an accident.

"Cause of death?"

"He would've succumbed to multiple contusions and four broken ribs if he didn't of severe head trauma caused to his left temple."

Of course, that was a medical way of saying someone got up close and personal to Gendo…and blew the left side of his head away with a loud firearm.

"Then…he has no one left to come back to that is a relative," Rei stated, which confused Asuka.

"What?" She asked her. "What are you talking about?"

"Ikari-Kun," she reiterated. "He's alone now. Even if he were still alive, any and all that were related to him by blood are gone."

Asuka then realized what the girl was getting at. It hadn't even been two days since the Geo-Front was officially closed off and the last of the NERV personnel left to parts unknown that the Evangelions were transported to Germany for diagnostics, decommission and dismantlement. And only a handful of people were trying to recall the fact that Gendo Ikari's only good thing was his only son that he had sent to die saving the human race…since it was common knowledge that the man didn't deserve him. None of them could deserve Shinji, anymore.

"You think he's alive somewhere when we saw what happened?" She asked Rei.

"Don't you?" Rei countered.

"I wish, but I can't undo what I saw that day."

"What will you do?"

"I've considered writing a book."

"A book?"

"Yeah."

Outside the albino girl's room, Misato, who heard of the status of Gendo Ikari, wondered who'd want the man dead and leave the former First Child clinging to life after a car crash that was clearly a deliberate hit instead of killing her to eliminate witnesses.

"Why not return to Germany?" She heard Rei ask Asuka.

"There's nothing left for me there," Asuka responded.

"I guess we're alike, then. We don't have anything left…or anyone."

-x-

"…I don't get your codename, Shinji," said Ed to the teen as they and Alphonse ate dinner with Nina and Alexander that evening. "I mean, I don't think it's a joke or anything demeaning, but… I just don't get it."

"I don't get it, either," Al agreed with his brother. "Sorry about that, Shinji."

"Don't be," he told them, eating a dumpling, not the least bit upset by their lack of understanding of his designation. "I barely understand it myself, but I'm pretty sure it relates to wanting to use alchemy for medical purposes only, even if I used it offensively or defensively."

"But you stopped a bad man before he could hurt more people," went Nina to him, "so even if you didn't do as you said you wanted to do with alchemy, you still helped good people out there today. The Living Alchemist protects the living, embraces life."

"Eh-heh-heh. Thank you, Nina."

"Arrf," Alexander added in.

"Thank you, Alexander."

-x-

"…So, you gave him the name of Living Alchemist?" Lust questioned King Bradley as she lay on a slab beside Gluttony, who was restrained by a series of chains. "That seems to be his weakness; an alchemist that embraces life to the point where he doesn't want to take it. Do you honestly expect him to be able to do as desired?"

"It's not so much what he's expected to do that intrigues me about him," Bradley told her, and then removed the pieces of rebar from her body. "It's more of what he's capable of. He defeated you and Gluttony and freed Greed. If he's capable of alchemy that can hinder us, then until he can be properly manipulated, he'll be kept busy with other tasks that will test his mettle."

Now free, Lust extends her hand blades and swears vengeance upon the Living Alchemist.

"Can I eat him?" Gluttony asked, really wanting to eat the brat.

-x-

Even though the library had closing hours, all Shinji requested of the staff was three more hours as he searched through old medical books. He wasn't trying to make himself known for taking down a notorious serial killer of women or expect small favors, just a little extra time to expand his knowledge. Since one of the workers there was a woman that used to shop at Barry's, they bend the rules for him this one time.

"You're an unusual person, Major Ikari," went the woman that suggested this after-hour exception towards Shinji that was addressed as Sheska.

"Please, call me Shinji, ma'am," he responded, "and in what way am I unusual?"

"Well, you're younger than the usual State Alchemist, you're acting as the guardian of two boys that are also State Alchemists, and your first success was taking out a serial killer. As a State Alchemist, I had expected you to kill the guy, but instead, you caught him and the state executed him for all of his victims."

"Even if I'm a State Alchemist, I didn't become a so-called 'military dog' to kill anyone, ma'am. I joined the State Military with the aim of not to kill. There are three kinds of hands in life: The hands that end life, the hands that preserve life…and the hands that live life. I'd rather be the latter two pairs than the first pair. Which hands are yours?"

Sheska merely raised her left hand up and held a book in it.

"Hands that live life, thank you very much," she told him.

-x-

A week went by until Shinji, Edward and Alphonse were called to Central Command for their first assignment as State Alchemists.

"All three of us need to inspect this eastern town's coal mines?" Ed asked Mustang when they were informed of their assignment.

"That's right," he answered. "It's currently run by Lieutenant Yoki. He's been informed that you three will be there to see if the mines are still of value."

As alchemists, they had to be versed in the study of minerals, and if the mines were devoid of any coal or other valuable resources, then they were no better than regular caves. Most of the country's resources came from mining and agriculture, so it was a necessity to ensure that the locations these were derived from were still of value.

"How long do we have until we need to be there?" Shinji asked Mustang.

"The day after tomorrow," he answered him.

"I suggest you two do whatever it is you need to do before we head out," Shinji then told the Elrics, noticing that they had an expression of minor sadness on their faces.

-x-

"You three are leaving already?" Nina asked the three when they returned from Central Command. "Aw."

"It'll only be for a few days, and then we'll come back," said Al to her.

"You three promise?" She asked again.

"Yeah, Nina," Shinji responded, holding out his left hand's pinky finger. "I pinky promise you that we'll come back."

Nina then extended her left hand's pinky finger and clasped Shinji's.

-x-

 _Two weeks later_

 _To think that most of Eastern Central Command was corrupted due to the misuse of power and acceptance of bribes,_ thought Shinji as he and the Elrics got off the train at Central Station. _It only goes to show me that people are the same, no matter what time, place or even universe they're from. There's good and bad everywhere._

Shortly after arriving to Youswell to inspect the coal mines, Shinji, being the oldest of the three and therefore, the only one to be taken seriously by Yoki, found that the man they met was not only shown to be heavily influenced by greed, but was a man so corrupted by a sense of power that even he failed to comprehend that he was on a slippery slope heading towards failure. And the alchemist they met that Yoki had enlisted, Lyra (whom Shinji had to admit was quite attractive, were it not for her attitude mirroring Asuka's to a degree), a young woman that aimed to become a State Alchemist like they had, but her aspirations were becoming corrupt because of Yoki, which led to a brief altercation between them.

"Shinji, you may try to deny it to a degree, but you seem to have a bit of a taste for combat," Ed tells him as they walked out into the sunlight.

"Thank you, Edward, but I shall deny that as the truth once again," he told him, sighing. "Lyra wasn't as extreme as Barry had been…and I had more control over my actions."

"And you healed her and the people after the altercation," reminded Alphonse. "You didn't even need any bandages, just some water and dirt. You were like, the most amazing amateur healer I have seen so far."

"Thank you, Alphonse."

Although it had only been two weeks since they last saw her, they all missed Nina in their own way, and made the move to go see her first over reporting to Mustang about their return.

"How do you think she's been with just Alexander?" Shinji asked the brothers.

"Probably sad," suggested Ed.

"There aren't that many kids her age that live close by, too," added Al.

"We should get her a gift before we head over," Shinji insisted on such an idea.

"Yeah," the brothers agreed with him.

Their first order of business was to hit a toy store, then the Tucker house, spend time with Nina and Alexander, then report to Central Command.

-x-

Up on the roof of Central Command, King Bradley was being reported to by Lust, whose orders had now been to follow the Living Alchemist from a distance.

"So, how did he perform?" He asked her.

"He may have more power over alchemy than we suspect," she suggested. "He was able to heal people that were injured by another alchemist in Youswell…and this was achieved without a Philosopher's Stone. Not even an incomplete version of it. There is something about him that…isn't like other alchemists that exist out there. Who is he?"

"That's what I'd like to know myself," Bradley expressed. "Is he a capable fighter?"

"When he needs to be or when his life is in jeopardy, yet, he exhibits absolutely no capacity for killing. It's like he can't bring himself to do what he is required to by the State Military because of some misplaced sense of self-righteousness or morality."

"He did say he desired to use alchemy for medical purposes. Doctors have an oath they follow to do no harm onto others, something he seems to follow to a degree."

"That's useless. No matter how hard people try, they can't escape their primitive impulse to kill others. It's something that will follow them to the end of time."

"Whether it follows him to the end of his life or not is up to him. He's a virtual unknown still."

What Lust didn't share with the Fuhrer was her personal belief that this boy wasn't going to live up to their master's expectations at all, not if he wasn't interested in the Philosopher's Stone to the point of creating one.

-x-

"Why did you need to get a wrench, Edward?" Shinji asked the young man as they were a block away from the Tucker estate. "Nina doesn't know anything about tools."

"It's not for Nina," Ed explained. "It's for Winry."

"It's an odd gift for a childhood friend."

"She's into automail now."

"So, she's a grease monkey, then."

"She's a what?"

"Uh, that's someone that works with machines, a mechanic."

"Yeah…I guess she's that. Just don't let her hear you call her that. She might just hit you with a wrench aside the head."

"I've been kicked in the face before by a girl. I'm pretty sure I can handle a blow to my head."

"By a girl with red hair, you mean?" Alphonse asked him. "The aggressive girl you used to live with alongside a woman that drank a lot?"

"Yeah… I miss them."

"Maybe alchemy can help you get back someday," Ed suggested.

"Maybe, assuming alchemy works that way."

As they walked outside the fence of the estate, Shinji suddenly stopped…and clutched the stuffed dog he had gotten for Nina that looked like Alexander. He was starting to feel a sense of dread emanating from within the house.

"Shinji?" Al spoke. "Shinji?"

"Something doesn't feel right," he expressed.

The brothers looked at the house, but couldn't see anything that hinted at something wrong.

"Maybe it's because we were gone for two weeks," Ed suggested, trying to alleviate Shinji's concern. "I mean, two weeks away? A lot can happen."

 _Yeah,_ Shinji agreed with him…to a degree, _including things that don't need to._

They entered the house, but it was so quiet and dark. It hadn't been like this when they first arrived; there was a measure of quietness to it, but there was a tinge of happiness because of the little girl that lived here. And in Shinji's heart, it felt like someone had snuffed out the happiness.

" _I was able to create a chimera able to speak and understand human speech,"_ Shinji recalled Tucker's initial success to how he became a State Alchemist. _"…A chimera able to speak and understand human speech…"_

He walked into the dining room and couldn't find it in him to turn the light on, yet could see things clearly. There was something on the table in a bowl that he noticed, some sort of crumpled paper. Taking it out, he straightened it out to reveal a partially-burnt drawing of five people and a dog: The Elric brothers, himself, Alexander, Tucker…and Nina herself. But why would anyone try to destroy such a nice drawing?

Flash! He saw a boy, a possible, slightly-older version of Ed, punching Tucker in his face…in front of a creature that looked like Alexander…but with less muscle and more fur.

" _Edward, friend,"_ the creature had uttered.

Flash! He was returned to the dining room and found himself pressed against the wall behind him, the drawing in his left hand restored to its original state before it was burnt.

"Nina," he uttered. "Alexander… Tucker…if you so much as do what I fear you may do, there will be repercussions to face."

"Shinji!" He heard Alphonse's voice call out as the sound of footsteps came running into the room. "Shinji! It's Nina! Her father, he…he…"

"Where are they?" He asked him.

Al led him to a room downstairs…where Ed was punching Tucker senseless in front of a chimera that looked exactly like the one from his vision.

"Ed, stop!" Shinji told the older brother, rushing over and grabbing him to keep him from killing the unstable man.

"Shinji!" Ed yelled. "He turned Nina into a chimera! He doesn't deserve any mercy! Look at what he did to her!"

Shinji looked at the chimera, at Nina and Alexander, and then back at Edward.

"And he will face the consequences for what he did to her," he told him, and grabbed Tucker by his shirt. "Why, Tucker? Why did you do it? Was it because of your pending assessment…or because of Basque Grand?"

"I wouldn't expect you to understand," Tucker responded, "but ever since you three showed that you could perform alchemy without the need for circles, Grand felt threatened by any possibility of any in the military trying to claim credit for finding you three…and before then, he was angry about the Laboratory Five incident because of what he was working on was discovered and he couldn't take control of the situation. He took his frustrations out on my lack of progress in refining chimeric alchemy. One way or another, he made it clear that I was going to have to show better results."

"So you decided to go with Human Transmutation, since human beings are more malleable to work with than regular animals, knowing that it was forbidden to attempt. Yet, you showed no fear of the outcome of your act. Because Human Transmutation is often unpredictable, there's no telling what could happen…unless you tried it before, didn't you?"

"He did," Ed revealed; he never mentioned it, but he did some investigating into the first chimera that Tucker created that got him his State Alchemist license. "He used his wife, Nina's mother."

Shinji's grip on Tucker's shirt tightened as he lifted the man up to his feet.

"How depraved are you?" He asked him. "If I had the will to do so, I'd end you without hesitation…but then I'd be robbing a little girl I saw as a sister to me of her father when he should rot in prison for his crimes."

"No matter what I did, I was going to lose everything," Tucker stated.

"Even if you had lost your license, you wouldn't have lost everything. You made the choice to believe you would…and just made it so that you would."

"Shinji…" They heard Nina's voice, and Shinji turned back to face her.

"Nina…gomen nasai ("I'm sorry"), Nina… Gomen nasai…gomen nasai…"

Neither Ed nor Al knew what it was Shinji was saying, but could only assume that it was some sort of apology where he was from. They had left her alone with her father…and he turned her into an abomination of alchemy.

A tear fell from Shinji's left eye.

-x-

Although the Elrics complained that it was unfair to her and not right to do so, Tucker and Nina were taken by Basque Grand and his men with orders that they and Shinji speak to nobody about what had happened.

" _What?"_ Basque had questioned Shinji before the unit had left with the Sewing-Life Alchemist and his daughter.

" _What you just ordered of the three of us,"_ Shinji had responded, _"you can deny it all of you want to, but you knew this would happen. I can't prove your involvement, but you should know something. Whether it's greed or curiosity, a desire for power or recognition, there will always be a price to pay for your attempts. When that time comes, you had best be ready to pay."_

Basque and his men then left…and Shinji and the Elrics were forced to relocate from the former Tucker estate.

"What did you mean by that, Shinji?" Al asked as the three were in a hotel for the time being, sitting by a table, referring to what he told the Iron Blood Alchemist.

"That man made Tucker commit a dreadful crime against humanity and nature," he explained. "He's responsible for a little girl becoming a blight of nature upon us…and one way or another, there will be a price he will have to pay for his involvement, the same as Tucker."

"How can he pay for his involvement…if he can walk away with Nina being condemned to life as a research specimen?" Ed questioned. "We didn't do anything to stop them from taking her."

Shinji held up his kunai…and slammed it onto the table, startling the brothers.

"Believe in angels, Edward," he told them. "Believe in justice. Believe…in retribution."

-x-

The night was cold and the Fourth Laboratory was engaged in heavy research on an unwilling subject. And worse, Shou Tucker, who should've been in jail for his crime…was instead working on refining the process of chimera creation.

Nina, still conscious within the chimera that was herself and Alexander, could not understand why her father and these people were hurting her further…and wondered where the Elrics and Shinji were at a time like this. She really missed them (cue to the theme of _Black Lightning_ ).

Smash! A door in the hallway was punched opened, revealing a figure dressed in a black coat over a black shirt and pants, their whole head masked by a dark oni mask with dark hair.

"Who are you?" A State Alchemist demanded, raising a rifle at the individual.

Clap! The figure clapped their hands and slammed their left hand on the floor and their right hand against the wall, transmuting them to their will.

The wall bubbled beside the man and out reached a large hand, grabbing him tightly.

"Aaaaurgh!" He screamed, and three more men ran out of the room.

Clap! The figure clapped their hands again and slammed them onto the floor, pulling something out of it.

It was a pair of curved swords, which they used to cut through the two men in front of him, slicing at their knees.

"Aaurgh!" They groaned, and one of the two on the left tried to draw a transmutation circle on the floor.

"I'm gonna bury you up to your head, you son of a bitch!" He shouted.

Smack! The masked figure did a front flip and kicked the man in his face with his right black boot, sending him falling before clapping their hands again to transmute.

Grabbing the second man by his uniform coat, the transmutation rendered the man an inflatable balloon or ball of helium, bouncing around and unable to move.

"Hey!" He whined. "This is crazy! Who are you and what do you want?!"

"Want?" They finally spoke, a distorted voice that was so heavy you couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman under the mask. "I'm here for the innocent…and I will crush any and all parties involved in this desecration of life."

"Gaaarugh!" The third guy yelled, holding a baton.

Clap! The masked person transmuted swords into a pair of armored gauntlets and blocked the State Alchemist's attack, three times, before punching him under his jaws.

"Your basics are poor," the figure expressed. "Why don't you try some imagination?"

He grabbed the man by his right arm and caused another transmutation that left him fused by his clothes into the wall behind himself.

"This one's for the living," the person stated. "This is for living life."

They walked down the hall and stopped in front of a door…only to transmute it into building blocks that fell away, revealing Tucker, Grand and some men in white coats around a dog chimera with a saddened look.

"Before we get started, does anyone want to get out?" He asked them.

There was something about this mysterious person, and she didn't know what it was or why, that made her feel a sense of being protected, that everything would turn out okay.

The men in white coats got tense and fled the room.

"Sorry, sir," one of them uttered to Grand, "but I have a wife at home, and we're trying to have kids ourselves. This is Tucker's mess, and you forced him to make it."

Basque Grand looked at this mysterious person and demanded, "Who are you?! Identify yourself?! You think you can just waltz in here and interfere with research approved by the State Military that will improve our future?!"

"I don't care about your military or your research," the mysterious alchemist expressed beneath the mask. "I'm only here to save a life that was tortured by the likes of you two."

Tucker then looked at his chimera daughter and understood that this mystery man was here for Nina. Somehow, he must've found out about his work on chimeras and came to put an end to it.

"You…can't take her," he told the man.

"Shou Tucker, with the knowledge you possess, combined with your behavior and willingness to do whatever it takes to prove that you're capable of getting results…I've seen all I need to see in order to confirm that you are an unfit parent to your daughter. So I will crush you…after I crush the Iron Blood Alchemist…because he's no match for anyone, anymore."

"You dare say I'm weak?" Basque Grand retorted, raising his right arm, transmuting the armor of his gauntlet to cover his fist. "I'm a combat-experienced veteran of the Ishval Civil War! I'm the Brigadier General of the Amestrian State Military! What are you?!"

The masked man took a step forward…and suddenly, Basque Grand felt an aura of power emanating from him…and his arm felt heavy.

Tucker felt the same feeling of power from the man.

"I'm the guy that just needs one shot at you," he told Grand, and then shot like a bullet, seemingly defying the laws of gravity and physics, and let the Iron Blood Alchemist have it in between his legs, followed by a punch to his jaw, sending the brigadier general flying backwards and crashing onto a medical table, knocking over surgical tools.

"Ahh…" Grand groaned, clearly unconscious from the assault.

"That was for the people," the man said. "This is for embracing the gift of life."

Tucker picked up a scalpel and brandished it in front of the man.

"Do you really think a scalpel will do anything to me? If I have to…and I stress 'if', I will cut off one of your arms…and then one of your legs, and then I will cut off half your face while I'm at it. You will be this one-armed, one-legged, half-faced abomination, trying to move through the streets of Central City…like a turd…in the wind."

"Just who are you, you persistent stranger?" Tucker demanded.

The man then removed his mask for a second, letting Shou see his face, which caused the Sewing-Life Alchemist to reel back in fright before putting it back on.

"You breathe a word of this to anyone, and you will pay a price you can't hope to imagine," the masked man threatened him as he came over for the chimeric daughter. "Bear with me, Ms. Tucker. To return to what was once your original state, what you have become must be undone."

"You can't undo a chimeric transmutation," Tucker told him. "I fused them together completely. Separating them will likely cause more harm than help."

"Equivalent Exchange, Tucker. To obtain, something of equal value must first be lost, but the reversal is also true."

"You must give up what was obtained to reclaim what was lost?"

The man clapped his hands and placed the right hand on the chimera's head and the left on the chest, the brain and heart, respectively, and focused solely upon what was desired from this transmutation. He desired the little girl and her dog, two separate beings, pure, innocent, happy and carefree. Their smiles, their laughter, the dog's faults and the girl's curiosity as the chimera began to glow bright blue.

Tucker in disbelief as the man attempted to undo what he had done to Nina. There was no chance of reversing the transmutation he had pulled off; it was a perfect fusion of human and beast, completely irreversible. Unless he was a skilled and powerful alchemist or had a Philosopher's Stone in his possession, there was no chance in Hell that he could achieve the impossible.

 _Be open to the possibility of returning to your previous state, Nina,_ thought the man. _Believe that you will be restored, that the Elric brothers and Shinji Ikari will be waiting for you to return. Your life is still desired by others that care for you to live it out._

When the glow ceased, Tucker saw that his beliefs in irreversible chimeric transmutations was nothing but a belief that he believed in. In front of him, the man was holding his daughter, unconscious, nude, but very much alive, and his dog running around the room.

"Arrf, arrf, arrf!" Alexander barked, stopping beside the man as he turned to remove his dark coat and drape it onto the girl.

"Let's get you out of here," he told her as he carried her out of the room.

"Please, how did you do it?" Tucker pleaded. "You gotta tell me how."

The man looked at Tucker and the Sewing-Life Alchemist could see through the mask that he wasn't going to get anything from him, not after his unforgivable crime.

"You're the Sewing-Life Alchemist, aren't you?" He asked him. "Use that brain of yours and find out on your own. Use regular animals, not humans. Do what you did again, and you will know a suffering that you can scarcely imagine surviving."

He then left out the room with his daughter and dog, leaving him alone.

Tucker was reduced to having nothing. He had nothing…and nobody.

-x-

"…So, how was Rei doing today?" Kaji asked Misato as they were at the park in Tokyo-3. "You did see her at the hospital today, right?"

"Yeah," the purple-haired woman responded. "The doctors say she'll be in recovery for a month, but they don't know what will happen with her after she's declared fit to leave."

"I haven't received any contact from Asuka's relatives after NERV was disbanded. I keep calling them, but all I get is their voicemail. It's like they don't want to hear about her."

"With NERV no longer a necessary organization, I expected anyone here under orders to work with our branch to be recalled back to their countries, including Asuka, but her family doesn't call for her to return? I'm starting to wonder if what Rei said to her in the hospital was right."

"What? What did Rei say to Asuka?"

"That they don't have anything or anyone. It probably stems from Shinji not being around. I don't blame her for believing in that. Even Asuka doesn't see a reason to return to Germany, even though it's required that she does."

"And what do you think?"

"I think I'd trade the Evas away to see Shinji again, alive and well, if I could."

"The Evas were a curse from the very beginning."

"Anything noteworthy on the news?"

"Nothing on Japan or Germany, but about a month ago, China claims to have found something unprecedented. Maybe they're just trying to forget about NERV, but whatever it is they claimed to have found, it must be better than what a paramilitary agency was doing."

"Yeah, maybe."

-x-

"…Shinji!" Shinji heard his voice being called by one of the Elrics as he stirred from slumber, still exhausted. "Shinji, wake up!"

Opening his eyes, the young teen awoke to the new day and gripped his kunai.

"What is it?" He asked, seeing Alphonse beside his bed.

"Nina," the younger Elric brother uttered. "She's here."

"What?"

"Nina's here. Ed and I woke up, and she was asleep on the sofa. She's human again."

Shinji got up and followed Al into the hotel living room…where he saw the little girl on the sofa with her dog at the foot of it.

"Good morning, everyone," Nina greeted them, holding onto the dark coat that she was wearing.

"Nina," Shinji expressed, wanting to believe that this girl was truly the one he met and lived with before her father harmed her. "How is this possible?"

"A stranger came for me…and brought me here last night," she explained to the best of her ability. "He said you three were waiting for me."

"Yeah," sighed Ed, happy that she was here. "Yeah, we were waiting for you."

"Nai-nai," Nina pointed to the kunai in Shinji's left hand; she couldn't pronounce the name of the small blade exactly…and still called a transmutation circle a magic circle because alchemy looked like magic, making no doubt that this girl was the real deal.

"Welcome back, Nina," Shinji greeted.

No doubt there would be problems on the way, such as how to ensure that Nina would be protected from her father and Basque Grand, but for now, the three men just wanted to enjoy the fact that this little girl that was like a sister to them was back to normal and in their presence.

 _Embrace life, Shinji,_ Shinji heard a voice similar to his own say to him in his mind. _Life is your power, life is your reason for being, and life is your greatest blessing. Embrace it._

To be continued…

A/N: Well, what do you think? Longer than I had planned, but we finally get to see Shinji get his symbolic second name that certainly goes well with his feats. He is now the Living Alchemist, but he still has a ways to go before fully adjusting to what he can really do. And anyone thinks the Eva universe will eventually switch from the undone war with the Angels and the research and exploitation of the Evas to whatever it is that was claimed to be found in China?


	9. Bonds of Time and Space

Creation began on 10-01-18

Creation ended on 10-19-18

Neon Genesis Evangelion

The Living Alchemist: Small Bonds of Time and Space

Basque Grand couldn't connect the three new State Alchemists to the assault on the third lab, the restoration of the Tucker girl, and even if he could, there was no evidence or witnesses that could tie any of them to the reason the girl was fine and with them again. No, even if he wanted to out of spite, he couldn't blame them for his inability to control the situations he found himself involved in. And even if he could convince the Fuhrer of letting his scientists and Tucker take custody of the his daughter for further research, there was always the chance that someone with an opinion or agenda would argue how the girl had a right to grow up without being condemned to a life as a laboratory specimen…and they'd win the outcome.

 _If there's no evidence that can state the girl was even in my custody or that she was turned into a chimera, I can't prove that she was ever a chimera to begin with because I made sure there was no record of her ever being in that lab,_ Grand thought, _and nobody that was there is willing to talk due to their meaningless pride. Even Tucker refuses to identify the man that took his daughter, even though he saw his face!_

" _He was life incarnate,"_ Tucker state only when Grand demanded the identity of the culprit. _"He was life incarnate."_

-x-

For some reason, they didn't get any trouble from Shou Tucker when they told him that Nina would be taken to Resembool so he couldn't repeat his crime again, but Shinji didn't trust Basque Grand or the State Military to get any funny ideas over the girl's situation. Fortunately, Ed and Al were grateful that Pinako and Winry would look after her while they were refining their alchemy skills and working towards building better lives.

"Will we see each other again?" Nina asked the three as she and Alexander were boarding a train to Resembool.

"You know we will," Ed told her.

"Thank you very much again," she praised them.

Shinji, despite his judgement on the situation that was just relocating the girl, sighed and uttered, "Edward and Alphonse, you two get on the train with her."

"Huh?" The brothers responded, confused.

"It's only a precaution," he explained, "but I don't trust she and Alexander will get there without you two chaperoning them."

"What?" Ed gasped.

"What about you?" Al asked.

"I'll be on the next one behind you," he told them. "This is the express; it only goes to Resembool and back here. They travel every one hour and forty minutes. Until then, don't let her out of your sight."

It wasn't planned, but the Elrics accepted what Shinji suggested and got on the train with Nina.

When the train sped off, the Living Alchemist left to go get his train ticket and the Elrics' tickets so they wouldn't get into trouble.

 _Although they claimed to have revoked Tucker's license as the Sewing-Life Alchemist,_ he thought as he purchased the three tickets, _I don't trust anyone that works with or for Basque Grand._

 _You'd be wise to not trust them,_ he heard that voice again, but it felt like it was beside him. _Anyone that threatens the delicacy and purity of life for the sake of their own interests or for the pursuit of power are not to be trusted unless they earn your trust and respect._

As much as he felt he should've questioned this voice (or his very sanity), he chose to overlook the voice since he couldn't risk losing his own license as a State Alchemist due to some, possible, mental instability that he couldn't explain just yet. And so far, he hadn't made any mistakes or suffered severe repercussions from hearing the voice. He wasn't sure why, but the fact that the voice sounded so much like his own made him wonder…if his own soul had somehow been split when he arrived in this world.

-x-

"…It's a big door," said Asuka as she, Misato and Kaji looked at the newspaper and saw the revealed find in China.

"It looks like something that was pulled straight out of Hell itself," Kaji confessed, somewhat intimidated by its very appearance.

In the picture, the find was some sort of large gate with stone or obsidian statues on its sides, all contorted and twisted, and on the doors was what the finders stated to be an eye of sorts (A/N: This is the Gate from the first anime). In many ways, it did look as though it had been dredged up from Hell itself.

"What do you suppose they'll do with it?" Misato asked.

"Probably put it in a museum somewhere," suggested Kaji, "call it another antique object."

But as Asuka looked at the papers, she saw that what the unshaven man had suggested was far from the truth.

"The Chinese government wants Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki to help in opening the doors," she revealed as she read the article further. "They believe it may relate to his theories of metaphysical biology or whatever."

"But he left NERV, so why do they want his help when they could get it from someone else?" Misato suggested; she only said it because the elder was the first to grow a conscience and leave NERV after Shinji was killed.

"I'm starting to think this gate thing is a hoax," Asuka told them as she saw different pictures relating to the gate. "The people that found it claim that they could hear voices coming from inside it."

-x-

"Welcome back, you two!" Winry cheered as Ed and Al arrived with Nina and Alexander. "Wow, look at you two! Did you actually do it?"

"Yeah, we did," said Ed to her as they entered the Rockbell residence. "It feels like we haven't been back here in a long time."

"You three have been in Central City for a few months to become State Alchemists," Pinako reminded him as Alexander and Den met for the first time. "So, what are you three called in the military or haven't they given you codenames yet?"

"Building," went Al to her. "They gave me the codename 'Building Alchemist'. Not something I would've chosen for myself, but it fits with my aim to use alchemy to build things."

"Nice," Winry praised. "What about you and Shinji, Ed?"

"Fullmetal," he answered for himself. "I think Shinji got the weirdest name outta the three of us. They call him the Living Alchemist."

"The Living Alchemist? I don't know, it sounds right for him. How's he been doing?"

"His first move as a State Alchemist was to solve a murder investigation…and he caught the guy that was responsible for over thirty murders of the women in the city."

"What?! He went after a serial killer?! Did he get hurt?" Pinako asked the brothers.

"We think the only thing that hurt with him was just finding the last victim and then fighting the guy that was about to hurt the woman that was on his security detail. She mentioned that they didn't see Shinji fight the killer, they just saw the aftermath." Ed explained to them. "I think he could've done more than catch the guy. But he didn't."

"You mean, kill the guy?" Winry asked him. "As a State Alchemist, he could've done so."

"Except he didn't," Al reminded them. "He wants to use alchemy for medical purposes…even though it doesn't seem to change the fact that he seems able to use it for combative purposes. As someone that wants to be a doctor, he would follow the oath they took to do no harm onto others. Even alchemists that want to be healers would follow that oath, as well."

Over an hour had passed after helping Nina get settled in. The girl had wandered around the small town with her dog later that afternoon, and stopped to look upon the Elric house that seemed…quite lonely in her eyes.

"Whose house is that?" Nina asked Al, who was with her and Alexander, pointing to the house.

"That's our house," he explained. "We haven't been back there since… Well, since we met Shinji months ago."

"It looks lonely," she expressed, "almost sad in a way."

Alphonse wouldn't deny the girl's assumption that the house seemed saddening. It was probably only because of Shinji's reversal of their failed Human Transmutation that he and Edward didn't go and burn the place down. Maybe even have Shinji say that just because they made one mistake didn't mean they had to erase where it happened.

"You should clean it," he heard Nina suggest.

-x-

It was only a minor habit, but Ed couldn't stop examining where his right arm connected to his body. No scar was present, not even the fox bite mark from the time he and Al were on Yock Island when they were trying to figure out what the phrase, "All is One and One is All" for a whole month. Most likely, he was just on the lookout for any signs that his replacement arm was made with alchemy, since most objects made with alchemy were often imperfect, but said limb was flawless, like it had been sculpted to perfection and seamlessly melded to his body.

"You know, I saw him transmute that arm right onto you when he came back from your house with Al's body," he heard Winry say behind him as he stood in front of the mirror. "He even checked himself to make sure it was exactly like your original one."

"Lately, I've come to notice how Shinji's transmutations all seem flawlessly achieved," he explained as he turned to face, putting back on his shirt. "It's like he sculpted his transmutations instead of fabricated them on the go. He's…artistic."

"Yeah, I noticed when I saw that small blade of his. What do you think of him now that you're all State Alchemists?"

"What I think about Shinji? Honestly, as much as I trust him, sometimes, it feels like he's not entirely himself. Sometimes, whenever he talks, it's like he's not entirely there or he has something on his mind that weighs heavily on him."

"Maybe he's just concerned about things we don't fully understand yet," she suggested. "He is fourteen, after all. Or maybe fifteen now, if he's aged considerably."

"No, he's still fourteen. And then, there's what happened with Nina…and the aftermath."

"What do you mean?"

"Her father…a few days ago, did something unforgivable to her and Alexander. He transmuted them into a chimera…and it was discovered that he had done the same thing to her mother, his wife, over a year ago when he applied for his license. Shinji didn't lose his temper like I did with him, even when she was being taken away by this Basque Grand guy. I confronted him about this, and he said to believe in angels, in justice and retribution. I don't know why, but…it was like he knew that things would work out in the end, because Nina was in our hotel the very next morning, human again."

"You think that maybe he had something to do with it?"

"I want to believe that…but then I'd have to wonder how he could be responsible for something like that. If he had a Philosopher's Stone, maybe, but he doesn't seem interested in anything like that old fairy tale."

"Still, if he was responsible for her being returned to normal, it'd be a miracle."

"Yeah, it would be."

-x-

"…What's the matter, Pen-Pen?" Misato asked the penguin.

"Yarp…" He went, looking at the door that had Shinji's sign on it. "Yarp…"

"Yeah…I miss him, too."

Ring-ring-ring! Her apartment phone rang, and she answered it.

"Katsuragi residence," she greeted.

"Hello, Ms. Katsuragi," she heard the voice of Kozo Fuyutsuki on the other end. "It's Fuyutsuki. I hope I'm not disturbing you."

"No, of course not, sir. Have you… Did you hear about what happened to Commander Ikari?"

"I have, but that's not the reason I called. It's actually about the discovery made in China."

"That door?"

"They're calling it a gate, actually. The Chinese believe that it connects to another world."

"A gate?"

"The Chinese government asked me to oversee the project in opening the gate. When I asked why they wanted someone like me to do this, it turns out it has nothing to do with NERV…but more with the belief that there is a metaphysical side to it…and a need for morality."

"Have you decided?"

"I told them I'd think about it…but it was the reason I called you. I'd like for you to be the head of security if I do accept."

"Why me? Surely, there's someone more capable, more qualified…"

"True, but the people here, they just do as instructed…and I'd prefer for someone that won't."

"You mean people with morality."

"Yes."

-x-

The train ride to Resembool was a bit slower this time for Shinji as he sat in his seat, looking out the window at the countryside.

"Ah," he sighed, tilting his head back. _Was it all a daydream? Did I really see all of that?_

Prior to getting on the train, he had what felt like a daydream, but it also felt like…a premonition or a memory of something he never saw or did. It felt exactly what he had experienced at the Tucker estate before discovering that Tucker had actually done what he saw him do. Only this time, he was seeing a place in the desert bathed in red light, people in military uniform disappearing from sight, an older version of Edward facing a man with an X-shaped scar on his face with a destructive, right arm, a young woman that seemed tortured by the military…and even Lyra, only she was darker than what he would've expected from the Iron Blood Alchemist, accompanied by the androgynous man with dreadlocks. And then…there was a giant Transmutation Circle that seemed to be more runes than a circle, some sort of…Transmutation Array, maybe more advanced than a basic circle.

"Inverse a circle and you reverse an effect that is intentional," he told himself. "Reverse transmutations and you get not what you want, but what you had before."

Taking out his kunai again, the boy looked at it and decided that he'd need to transmute more of them after he had marked this one to separate his first from his extras.

-x-

Even at night, the house looked unbearably depressing, almost as depressing as the day their mother died. Not even Edward could deny this; he and Alphonse hadn't even been back inside yet, and both brothers were finding it difficult to do so.

"Nina actually suggested that it'd be cleaned up?" He asked Al.

"Yeah, she did," he answered back.

"I don't know what's crazier: The fact that she suggested that…or the fact that we're out here."

"Why not just go inside, then, Fullmetal and Building?" They both turned around and saw Shinji standing in front of them. "What? I just wanted to make sure you two were doing fine."

"When did you get in?" Al asked him.

"Eight minutes ago," he answered.

"You must've been an assassin in a former life," Ed suggested, "or at least a cat."

"Or I'm just a quiet person by nature. Still, better to have met me out here than some stranger. Even though Resembool is a small town, I want to believe that there's no such thing as a place devoid of crime rates."

"Eventually, you'll have to tell us everything about yourself, Shinji, beside you being from someplace over a century ahead of us and where alchemy doesn't exist."

"If I told you everything about my past, you'd have to swear not to do anything I wouldn't do."

-x-

"…This is where they came to?" Lust asked Gluttony as they stood on a gravel path in a small town. "Resembool?"

"Yes, Lust," he answered her, sniffing the air. "That boy is here. Can I eat him?"

"No, not now… Maybe never, Gluttony, for we might have need him. But for now, wait here. I'll see him myself."

The female homunculus walked down the path towards a small hill where a lone house resided.

 _If he's not interested in creating a Philosopher's Stone, he's of no use to us,_ she thought, _but if he can do for me what I desire, then maybe he has some value beyond it._

-x-

"I swear, if he makes another dish from his country, I'll have to beat some sense into that head of his," Ed told Al as they were in their bedroom.

"What do you mean? I liked the miso soup," Al told him; while grateful that Shinji brought food with him when he showed up, the Building Alchemist had no expectation of him cooking anything other than what he knew how to cook. "Plus, it's not all that bad to eat dishes from other places. Also, we barely know how to cook ourselves."

Ed couldn't deny that. He just wasn't a big fan of eating the same, strange thing after a while.

"Huh?" He heard Al utter, looking out the window. "Who is that?"

He looked out, as well, and saw a woman in black standing outside their house.

Suddenly, they saw Shinji walking up to her, indicating that he had stepped out of the house to either help her or confront her. It looked as though he had his kunai with him as a form of protection in case the woman was to try something.

-x-

Lust stood outside the Elric house when Shinji, who seemed different, came out with his kunai at his side.

"Do you even know who I am, Living Alchemist?" She asked him.

"You're Lust," he addressed. "I know what you are, but not who you are. The question is: What are you doing here and what do you want? All I can speculate so far about you is that there are at least four of you that exist. Homunculi…alchemically-created human beings, the result of failed Human Transmutations taken to the extreme because you have survived and adapted to your present state."

"You know what I am…and yet there's nothing you can really do about it without throwing your dreams away."

"Are Gluttony and Envy with you, or are you alone here? Even if you say I can't do anything, the fact that you're just a synthetic person means the playing field is quite even. You can't use alchemy, but you can most likely perform some feat that is similar to what alchemy can do. If Gluttony asked if he could eat me, then it's likely his ability revolves around his stomach. What is your specialty?"

"Now, what makes you think I'd tell you anything?"

"You wouldn't be here unless it was for a reason. What is your reason?"

"What do you know about the Philosopher's Stone?"

There was a silence that weighed between the two that bothered Lust because the boy took his time responding to her question.

"I know enough about that to know that it's something that comes at a terrible price that only the truly desperate would go to extremes to pay for," he finally answered her. "An old fable that attracts those both skilled and driven to seek it out or even create it for themselves, believed to allow one to bypass Equivalent Exchange, but it's nothing more than a lie."

"And the idea of possessing it doesn't appeal to you?"

"No…because while the stone would be within one's physical grasp if they so desired it, the repercussions and pain it causes to others would be more real than we are."

Lust felt disappointment in hearing him say what he said. An alchemist with absolutely no desire to obtain the Philosopher's Stone…served zero purpose to the master's plan. But still, there was something about him that…seemed alluring.

"Why, do you want the stone, knowing the price it has to obtain it?" Shinji asked her. "Homunculi can't use alchemy, and unless they have souls of their own, they can't use the stone, either. What good does it do you? How would it benefit you? Also, even if I were to create a stone, I doubt I could survive such an attempt because it requires a strong will, and even that doesn't mean a thing. So…why would you want it? To gain unfathomable riches, power and fame, or, just like the mad and foolish ones, do you have an agenda that involves a personal empire that lasts for all eternity? You can either tell me, or I can just assume that it's one of those reasons…or all of those reasons."

"I just want to become a human, boy," Lust revealed to him, "nothing more, nothing less."

"Just you…or the ones you're affiliated with?"

"Me."

-x-

"What are they talking about?" Al asked Ed, unable to hear what Shinji and the woman were saying.

"I'm not sure what they're saying," Ed responded, "but it looks like the woman wants something from him."

-x-

Even though it wasn't NERV, anymore, the Geo-Front still seemed like the most obvious place to relocate the gate for experimentation. The Chinese and Japanese governments had to agree on that, and because Tokyo-3 had become partially abandoned and the Angels were declared defeated, there was no fear of espionage.

"Hard to believe that this place used to be where strategies for stopping the Angels were planned," went Hyuga, one the few people from NERV's past that accepted the offer to work on the gate-opening project.

"Now, it's just serving as a location to work on this thing," added Shigeru as the gate from China was being setup within the former Eva pens that had been emptied. "Have you heard from Ibuki after the disbandment?"

"No. I tried calling three times, but I keep getting her voicemail. I guess when NERV was disbanded after the last Angel…she severed her ties after what happened, just like many others."

"I don't blame her. After the end of the war, I was set to move to Sendai to join a museum. It's only because I was still packing up my apartment that I got a request to come back here for this new project. What about you?"

"I was set for Obama to join a music band when I got this request."

As the gate was finally set to be studied, Misato, who had accepted the job offer as head of security, noticed something about the gate that she hadn't noticed before.

"Hey, that part of the gate on the top," she spoke to a Chinese woman that was part of the research team, "was that always there?"

Atop the gate was a stone infant being held up high by a pair of stone arms; it was as though someone were trying to offer it over to someone else that would take it to keep it safe from harm.

"No," she answered. "Truth is, ever since we found this thing, the stone figures all over it move every now and then, changing their positions ever so slightly. Nobody's sure why, just that this thing could've been what inspired that Nineteenth Century French sculptor that made the Gates of Hell, but this thing's a lot older than it appears."

"How old, exactly?"

"Best estimate so far is…somewhere between ten and thirty."

"I'm sorry, but ten and thirty, what?"

"Before the Common Era."

"You're kidding, right?"

"Nope, this thing has been around since somewhere between ten-thirty-thousand years."

"But that's not possible; there weren't people back there that were smart enough to understand this. Not even to the simplest degree."

-x-

"Did you kill him?" Gluttony asked Lust as she returned to get him.

"No," she answered, "but he knows now that he's to behave himself."

In truth, though, this was actually a lie. At the end of their conversation, the homunculus and the alchemist…came to an understanding agreement: In exchange for information on whoever she was serving alongside the other homunculi she was affiliated with and keeping out of trouble, Shinji would find a way for Lust to become a human without the need to sacrifice human lives. So long as both agreed to the terms of their deal, both could benefit in the future.

Lust, however, found it unlikely that the Living Alchemist could find a way to turn a homunculus into a human without a Philosopher's Stone. But even if she was wrapped in disbelief, she had to hold up her end until he found a way.

" _Where there's a will, there's a way,"_ he had told her. _"Even if we follow the founding law of alchemy, which is Equivalent Exchange, there is no such thing when one wants to trade a multitude of lives for just one. Maybe one life to save countless more if the situation warrants it, but there is no true equivalent trade for any life. Not mine, yours or anyone else's. If there's something that can substitute a Philosopher's Stone and can be obtained without the cost of human lives, I will use that."_

With that, she told Shinji to try heading towards the town of Xenotime located in the Amestrian desert after researching the Red Stone and Red Water.

-x-

"…Say, Shinji, who was that woman you were talking to last night?" Ed asked as Shinji as they and Al were sitting at the table about to eat breakfast.

"With any luck," he responded, deciding not to lie about some of his conversation with Lust last night to the brothers, "just someone that I'll be able to help out later on."

"She got a name?" Al asked.

"Yeah, unfortunately, it's not really a name that should be used in any conversation, so I asked if I could use my language's translation for her name instead."

"What's her name in your language?"

"Yokubo."

"That sounds nice."

"Nice to speak, just not nice to hear in any language you understand if it upsets the wrong ears."

"You make it sound like she's not a nice woman," Ed expressed.

"You never know who's who or why until after they do something that shows their true colors. She did, however, mention something that could help in alchemic research that's over in a desert town called Xenotime."

"Xenotime?" Al questioned. "What could possibly be there that could help with alchemy?"

"People," Shinji answered, but was cryptic, "minerals…hidden treasures that only alchemists can find over regular people."

-x-

Rei opened her eye to look at the ceiling above her, escaping a dream she had about Shinji. It wasn't all that bad, but it wasn't entirely good, either. In it, she saw Shinji, dressed as he usually had been in his school uniform with a dark coat that reached down to his knees, his face half-smeared in blood on his left side, his right arm looking broken or dislocated, and he was facing an elderly woman that looked rather unpleasant.

" _I had such high hopes of you to help me get what I wanted,"_ she had told him, sounding angry and disappointed with Shinji.

" _Yeah, I've disappointed a lot of people,"_ Shinji responded, sounding angry with her, _"and a handful of them have disappointed me."_

Then, just before she awoke, the elderly woman clapped her hands and unleashed a blast of light.

"Ikari-Kun," she sighed.

To be continued…

A/N: Well, to those of you that think Lust needs to be in the gray area of those that can be saved, here's something to glimpse at. And who thinks Rei's recent dream was a glimpse of Shinji facing Dante in a future encounter?


	10. Peer Through

Creation began on 10-19-18

Creation ended on 03-19-19

Neon Genesis Evangelion

The Living Alchemist: Peer Through

A/N: For those that think there's more to come for Asuka and Rei.

A solid month had passed since the Geo-Front had been repurposed to serve as a testing ground for the archeological find labeled simply as the Gate, and so far, all former NERV personnel present, along with the Chinese that found the Gate, had made sure to copy the detailed inscriptions on its sides and the doors that were the only part of it that didn't move every now and then. The difficult part was trying to understand what the inscribed characters all said because they looked ancient and belonging to a culture that didn't exist anywhere on the planet. And then, there was the confirmation of hearing what sounded like voices from within the doors; nobody could understand what they were on account of them being incoherent whispers.

"So, uh, Aja," went Misato to the Chinese woman in charge of the team tasked with translating the inscriptions during lunchtime in the cafeteria, "how goes the translation of the Gate?"

"Found some comparisons on some of the inscriptions, but they weren't characters to read," the woman, brownish hair tied in a ponytail with green eyes, explained. "They were star constellations, like the Big Dipper, Ursa Minor and the Four Symbols of Chinese astronomy."

"Were they ancient like the Gate, or recent?"

"Oh, they were ancient, too, just like the rest of the Gate. We're probably looking at it too hard because I can't understand even the simplest of the characters on it. At first, I thought some of it was a form of Cuneiform, but then I suspected that there was some degree of Egyptian or Arabic or some simple Greek. It's all mixed up."

"Everything's mixed up."

"What's got your panties in a twist?"

"You know about the boy that was killed earlier this year?"

"I don't know his name, only that his father was one of the people responsible for killing him."

"His name was Shinji…and yeah, his father was one of the people responsible. I was his guardian during the time he was with NERV."

"That's rough."

"You have no idea."

-x-

"…You're spending a lot of time at the library, Living," went Roy Mustang to Shinji as the boy carried a trio of books with him down the street. "How goes your research?"

"Steady as it goes, Flame," he responded; he couldn't let himself get distracted from his recent obligation by anyone, not even his superior.

"And what about Shou Tucker's daughter, how is she doing?"

"You mean Nina, and she's doing fine. She's staying with the Rockbells in Resembool."

"You think her father will try to fight you over this?"

At that, Shinji turned around to face the Flame Alchemist and uttered, "If he wants to challenge me over this, he's free to do so as he wishes. I will question his reasons…and his conviction. If both are within the realm of reasonability, I'll stand aside, but if he can't find morality in either, he needs to strengthen his resolve…or walk away."

"Barely a State Alchemist and you've already dealt a serious blow to the Sewing-Life Alchemist. Be careful, some believe that you could be trying to surpass everyone within the military."

"Why would I want that? I'm just a simple person with a simple goal."

When he turned to leave, Roy still got the feeling that he had struck a personal nerve within the Living Alchemist…but hadn't gotten any closer to the truth about him.

 _What are you up to?_ He wondered.

-x-

"…What'd you find on Xenotime, Al?" Ed asked his brother as they were looking up the location of the desert town Shinji mentioned.

"It used to be known for its reputed goldsmiths," Alphonse explained, "but then their gold rush ruined the top soil and destroyed the greenery. Apparently, there was a belief that the town was named after a mineral that once existed there, but it was so long ago, nobody's sure, anymore. What did you find out about it?"

"Pretty much the same as you did. I still can't see why Shinji would want to go there. Even if there were minerals of value to alchemy there, there probably wouldn't be much."

"He didn't say there were just minerals there. There are people there, too. Maybe he just believes there's something there that other alchemists have overlooked. He is older than we are, so he might know things we have yet to understand for ourselves."

"Yeah, maybe… You think he had something to do with what happened with Nina?"

Alphonse looked up from his book and responded at Ed, "I can't answer to that, Brother. To think he had something to do with that horrible act Tucker committed or its aftermath is to question whether we trust him or not. Leave it alone for now."

But Ed didn't want to leave it be just yet; if Shinji had something to do with Nina being restored to normal, he just wanted to know how he was able to do so…and why he didn't tell them.

-x-

Asuka stood in front of the Gate, just examining the structure and wondering what possessed whoever had made it to make it look the way it did. Nothing about it made any sense and she couldn't hear any voices coming from it.

"You don't really look special," she expressed towards the Gate. "You're old, practically an antique that belongs in a museum somewhere gathering dust until the end of time. That or someone's underground club for the sadomasochistic crowd, because you depict a lot of agony on your sides and front."

"You know, if you're trying to get a reaction from the Gate, it's pointless," she heard Misato say to her as she stood a good distance away. "It just stands there and shifts the figures every now and then, like it's nobody's business."

Asuka turned to face her, but then saw Rei present beside her on the right, sporting a sling around her left arm; her right leg had recovered enough for her to walk unaided by crutches.

"It's not like I have anything else to do," she told them. "Is there anything new on this thing that we don't know about yet?"

"They're going to try using a laser on it to open it in a few hours."

"Why not use a winch on it instead?"

"They don't want to damage it too much."

Rei walked over to the Gate and placed her right hand on the door, feeling its texture. It felt old and rough, unlike the wooden doors of modern buildings.

"I wouldn't touch it, you don't know what that thing could do later on," Asuka told her.

"Doors can't harm people," Rei responded, removing her hand from the Gate. "Hmm?"

She then pressed her head to the Gate, hoping to hear something with her right ear.

"Did you hear something from it, Rei?" Misato asked her as she came over.

Rei pulled her head back and faced Misato.

"I thought I heard his voice for a moment," she explained.

"I think you're going crazy," Asuka told her.

" _Equivalence,"_ Asuka then heard a voice that sounded just like Shinji's in her head.

"Did he say anything, like a word or a sentence?" She asked Rei.

"He said, _'Equivalence'_."

-x-

Xenotime was within reach now within the span of three days spent traveling towards it. The first thing any of the three State Alchemists saw that made it unlike what they were originally expecting…was that the town seemed similar to an oasis, due to the fact that it was a functioning town setup in the desert terrain. While there was some greenery, it seemed to lack the type of feel that made it more so than a simple town.

"We're here," Edward expressed as they set foot within the grounds of the town. "What to look for?"

"Anything you can find that's worth an interest," Shinji told him. "It can be anything, even just regular coal used for burning things."

They split up and agreed to meet at the bell tower they saw.

Shinji, staying closer to the tower, sat at an open diner to get a drink.

"You're a State Alchemist, aren't you?" The guy that served him a cup of lemonade asked him.

"Yes, why do you ask?" He responded.

"Any chance you specialize in making gold?"

"Sorry, but no, I prefer the unexplored field of medical alchemy. There are some things that money can't buy, even if we wanted it to."

The guy then had to cover his mouth and turn away as he coughed.

"Forget I asked," he told Shinji, but the Living Alchemist was concerned about his condition…and became curious.

"How long have you had that cough, sir?" He asked him.

"Just a few weeks," he answered.

Shinji then looked around them at the few people that were outside…and noticed some were wearing small masks to cover their mouths and had varying degrees of coughing.

"Have a lot of people been coughing more than usual?"

"Yeah, or much worse than just coughing, but the thing of it is, nobody knows why. There hasn't been an epidemic or a plague in years. Not since…"

"What? Not since what, sir?"

The man thought about it and said, "This guy came back a few years ago after spending time in Central. Nash Tringham. Everyone thought he could use alchemy to revitalize the goldsmith industry here, but after he came back, nothing happened. Hurgh!"

The man coughed again and Shinji climbed over the counter and helped him to a nearby chair.

"I'm sorry, sir," he apologized to him.

ZAP! Suddenly, Shinji felt like he knew what was ailing the man, like he had an epiphany or something, seeing an image of the guy's outline, but then watched as it began to show an x-ray of his lungs and heart.

"Sir, I… I think you were exposed to something hazardous to people," he told him.

"Hazardous? What do you mean?"

Then, noticing a few straws near them, Shinji asked the man to let him help him.

-x-

"…How long have they been near the Gate, Ms. Katsuragi?" Fuyutsuki asked Misato, noticing that Rei and Asuka were sitting by the Gate in the chamber.

"Ever since they both thought they heard Shinji's voice come from it," she explained to him. "It's been three hours since then."

"What do you think? Is it denial…or something else?"

"I honestly don't know what to think. If it was something else, I'd want to believe that it's possible to bring back the dead, but then, there's the grief resetting itself if it weren't possible."

Suddenly, they saw Asuka jump up and back away from the Gate.

Rei calmly got up and walked out of the chamber.

"Is something wrong, Rei?" Misato asked her.

"Pilot Soryu and I…" Rei uttered in somewhat of disbelief. "We heard Ikari-Kun's voice from within the Gate again."

"Did he say anything?" Fuyutsuki asked.

"He said, _'I will stop you'_."

"' _I will stop you'_?" Misato repeated. "Stop who?"

"Someone," said Fuyutsuki, just as confused.

"Probably someone that's fearful of him," they heard Asuka say. "Someone that's fearful."

Misato turned her gaze towards the Gate and pondered if she could hear anything from it from herself.

-x-

"…Oh, my God, Shinji, what did you do?" Alphonse asked as he and Ed found Shinji at a diner where it looked like he had just cut into a man's chest…with a straw or two.

"It's okay," the man expressed, feeling a little better now. "I can breathe easy."

The man had a pair of straws poking out of his exposed chest, just under his neck. It looked as though he had lost some blood, but was otherwise fine.

The blood itself was inside a cup on the counter, but it looked less red and darker.

"It's only a temporary fix until I can close your chest tubes up," said Shinji, looking at the cup of blood. "Somehow, you came into contact with a liquid substance that wound up inside you and you couldn't cope with it."

A moment later, the substance within the cup hardened and Shinji turned the cup over to empty it out onto the counter. It was shaped like a small disc, but looked as though it were made of a sort of gelatin substance instead of a pure liquid.

"Shinji, I think that's similar to something I read before coming here," said Ed to him. "It might be the Red Water."

"Red Water?" The man questioned. "A couple of months ago, our water sources flowed red. They said it was just a temporary leak, but nothing harmful."

"If this is indeed Red Water, it's anything but harmless," Shinji stated. "This stuff is alchemical in nature, but it's toxic to anything that can't regulate it, and that includes people."

"Red Water has alchemical properties?" Al spoke. "What could it do for an alchemist that knows how it works if they used it?"

"Based on some old research that didn't pan out, Red Water is the primary resource needed to create the Red Stone," Ed explained to his brother. "You take a refined version of Red Water, put it under a few tons of pressure until it solidifies and becomes stone-like."

"Like a Philosopher's Stone?"

"No," went Shinji, "more like an imperfect imitation. A Red Stone isn't as powerful as the fabled Philosopher's Stone is claimed to be, but would have applications for alchemic research. It's a kind of roulette at best, a gamble at worse. But this wasn't refined under pressure."

Shinji picked up the stone-like object and immediately felt repulsed by how it came to be.

"Sir, as the person this was harvested from, I should give it back to you," he told the man, "but as a State Alchemist, I fear this will be more trouble than it's worth if someone else got ahold of it and had less than good intentions on using it."

"Right now, I'd say that a State Alchemist having that would be like giving a gun to a small child," the man responded, "but to the young man that may have just saved my life…take it with you. Maybe it'll do you some good."

Shinji then took something out of his bag and put the stone into a container.

"Who said that this water leak was harmless to you and where can we find them?" Shinji asked him.

"Men that work for Mugear Baron, the landowner and scientist that lives on the mountain further downtown," he explained and pointed up towards the mountain obscured by some trees.

"Mugear Baron?" Ed went. "Is he an alchemist?"

"No, he's just a scientist and landowner."

But to Shinji, it felt like this Mugear Baron had something really bad to hide. And it was something that could spell disastrous for the people of Xenotime if it was allowed to continue without any regard towards their safety.

"You have a bad feeling about this, don't you, Shinji?" Al asked.

"I'll be honest, but part of my reason for wanting to come here was because the Red Water," he told the brothers. "But I didn't expect this. Not any of this."

"Who would?" Ed uttered. "But how can Red Water be dangerous to people?"

"We find an unfiltered source…I'll find the reason and reveal it to all."

-x-

"…What do you mean, there's someone else that might be able to make the stone better than him?" Mugear had asked the woman in front of him near the spring of Red Water.

The woman, none other than Lust, responded, "A State Alchemist with a goal that won't serve this one if Mr. Tringham ends up dead. Hide him if you have to, but if he ends up dead, you might as well consider the aid of the alchemist himself wishful thinking."

"Is he that important to our goal?"

"He may be invaluable if he can make use of the Red Water in a way that benefits both of us. He's in Xenotime right this minute, looking for information. Try to appeal to his little ambition, but don't oversell it."

Lust intended to uphold her side of the pact Shinji made with in exchange for his aid in crafting a semblance of the Philosopher's Stone to turn her back into a human in return for information on her benefactor and allies. Unfortunately for her master, this meant that she would have to limit her involvement with former contacts that were motivated by other ambitions that they believed the stone could fulfill in order to obtain it later. For someone called the Living Alchemist, she took it to mean that he respected life above all else, and that any loss of life would cause drawbacks.

" _If there's more than one of you that answers to someone, then you must learn to compartmentalize,"_ she remembered Shinji telling her. _"Keep this between us for now. Don't let anyone else know. You can't spill your secrets because you don't know all of them yet. All I know so far is that you're the only homunculus that longs to be human again. If the means I'm comfortable with using exist to fulfill your desire, they can be implemented. But until then, every life, even a tiny life on the verge of death, is sacred and must be held to a higher status. You stay out of trouble, Yokubo, and your existence itself is held to and by a higher status by me. So long as we both cooperate on opposite ends, we will both benefit from this agreement. That…is the deal."_

She wanted to believe that the master would fulfill her one desire, but after seeing this young boy that she started to suspect was a lot more powerful than other alchemists that existed in Amestris (maybe even more powerful than the master), Lust dared to believe that the Living Alchemist could do it, too.

"And if he can't?" Mugear asked her, concerned that this alchemist had ambitions that were more to their liking over the ideas of wealth and power.

"As I suggested," she repeated, "try and appeal to his little ambition, but don't oversell it."

Walking away, the female homunculus had to do the impractical, and hope that the Living Alchemist was greater than the desires of wealth, power, recognition, and world domination.

 _Why is he called the Living Alchemist? Why is he really called the Living Alchemist?_ She wondered.

To be continued…

A/N: Watching the premiere of _The Village_ , and I hope to get inspiration from it to help in future chapters of many stories. Peace.


	11. The Promise Made

Creation began on 06-15-19

Creation ended on 06-16-19

Neon Genesis Evangelion

The Living Alchemist: The Promise Made

A/N: Do you ever wonder what might've been said during the train ride between Resembool and Central City?

"…Say, Shinji, you wanna raise the bet?" Alphonse had asked the teenager across the table from him as they were playing cards.

"I'd rather not," Shinji responded. "Don't gamble too much of what you can't afford to lose."

"Okay, then. Try and beat this. I got a full house."

"I win again, Alphonse. Royal flush bests all opposing hands."

"Ah, come on! You must be cheating!"

"What do I have to gain by cheating? I beat Edward twice, and he thought I was cheating when he was the one shuffling the cards."

Edward, sitting on the other end of the car, looked at his brother and their watcher, still fuming over his double loss to Shinji from earlier…and all he lost to the teen was a bag of cookies.

"Are you sure you've never played before?" Alphonse asked Shinji, drinking his water.

"I'm positive," Shinji answered him. "This is the first I've ever played cards before. Care for a rematch against me?"

But Al put his cup down and got up.

"No, I gotta go now," he told him and ran down the opposite end of the car.

"He drank too much water, didn't he?" Ed asked.

"Yes, he did," Shinji answered.

"Hey, Shinji?"

"Yes?"

"Can you do me a favor?"

"What kind?"

"I'd need you to swear it. Swear to me that you can do it."

"I swear, Edward Elric, I'll do whatever favor you ask of me."

"If you ever see that man, please, punch him in his face for me."

"That man?"

"Hohenhiem…me and Al's father…who left home one day and never came back."

Shinji's eyes widened at the request he was being asked to do for Ed. He was expecting Ed to ask him to make a fool of himself, steal something that wasn't his, Hell, to even commit a Human Transmutation himself. But this, assaulting his and Al's father if he ever saw him (and he'd seen a picture of the guy after returning to the Elric household), that was a move he didn't anticipate. Unfortunately, it wasn't something he could refuse now; because he was sworn to by Edward, he had no choice but to uphold his end of the pact that was between them, even if he detested the very idea of doing so.

"Is that really necessary?" He asked.

"He just left and hasn't been seen for years. Even when Mom got sick…and then when she… He never returned. I hate him for that. So, if you ever see him, just punch him once in his face for me. Let him know why he deserved that."

"Is that really necessary? Punching him in his face, I mean. What would that achieve in the end? How would anyone benefit from him getting punched in the face…other than you?"

"I'd do it myself, but you're…taller than I am."

"It's personal, isn't it?"

"If it was your mother that got sick and your father didn't come to see her…wouldn't you want to punch him in the face?"

Shinji sighed and expressed, "If it was me…and I didn't have any fear or hesitations…I'd want to make sure that his nose was bleeding after I punched him."

"So…will you do it?"

"Yeah. You made me swear I'd do it, didn't you? That means I have to."

"Thank you, Shinji."

In a sense, it was probably the worst thing Edward could've asked of Shinji, but because he swore, Shinji was bound by his word. If he ever saw this Hohenhiem person, he would punch him in his face and let him know why he deserved it.

To be continued…

A/N: Since the events are changing, that means that you can expect Shinji to commit things that Ed might do, but not with the same mindset as Edward, including assaulting Hohenhiem.


End file.
